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Home  »  library  »  BIOS  »  Louis Agassiz (1807–1873)

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873)

Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe. An eminent Swiss naturalist; born at Motier, Switzerland, May 28, 1807; died at Cambridge, MA, Dec. 14, 1873. He studied medicine and comparative anatomy in the universities of Zürich, Heidelberg, and Munich. He gave many years to study of fossil fishes, and his first great work bore that title (1834). His next special researches were directed toward the explanation of glaciers, and he published ‘Studies of Glaciers’ (1844). In 1846 he made a lecturing tour of the United States, and in 1848 became professor of geology at Harvard, and in 1859 curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy. His contributions to the development of the facts and principles of natural science in his special departments are very numerous and of highest authority. Chief among his works written in English are: ‘Principles of Zoölogy’; ‘The Structure of Animal Life’; ‘Scientific Results of a Journey in Brazil.’ (See Critical and Biographical Introduction).