Louis Agassiz

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (/ˈæɡəsi/ AG-ə-see;

French: [aɡasi]) FRS (For) FRSE (May 28, 1807 –
Louis Agassiz
ForMemRS
December 14, 1873) was a Swiss-born American
biologist and geologist who is recognized as a
scholar of Earth's natural history.

Spending his early life in Switzerland, he received

a PhD at Erlangen and a medical degree in Munich.
After studying with Georges Cuvier and Alexander
von Humboldt in Paris, Agassiz was appointed
professor of natural history at the University of
Neuchâtel. He emigrated to the United States in
1847 after visiting Harvard University. He went on
to become professor of zoology and geology at
Harvard, to head its Lawrence Scientific School,
and to found its Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Agassiz is known for observational data gathering Born May 28, 1807
and analysis. He made institutional and scientific Môtier, Canton of Fribourg,
contributions to zoology, geology, and related Swiss Confederation
areas, including multivolume research books Died December 14, 1873 (aged 66)
running to thousands of pages. He is particularly Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
known for his contributions to ichthyological Citizenship United States
classification, including of extinct species such as
Education University of Erlangen-
megalodon, and to the study of historical geology,
Nuremberg (PhD)
including the founding of glaciology.
University of Munich

His theories on human, animal and plant Known for Ice age, Polygenism
polygenism have been criticised as implicitly Spouses Cecilie Braun (m. 1833; died
supporting scientific racism. 1848)
Elizabeth Cabot Cary (m. 1850)

Early life Children 3, including Alexander and

Pauline
Louis Agassiz was born in the village of Môtier (fr) Awards Wollaston Medal (1836)
(now part of Haut-Vully which merged into Mont- Scientific career
Vully in 2016) in the Swiss Canton of Fribourg.[2] Fields Paleontology
He was the son of a pastor,[3] Louis Rudolphe and
Glaciology
his wife, Rose Mayor.
Geology
Natural history
His father was a Protestant clergyman, as had been Institutions University of Neuchâtel
his progenitors for six generations, and his mother Harvard University
was the daughter of a physician and an intellectual Cornell University
in her own right, who had assisted her husband in Doctoral Carl Friedrich Philipp von
the education of her boys.[2] He was educated at advisor Martius
home [2] until he spent four years at secondary
Other academic Ignaz Döllinger, Georges Cuvier
school in Bienne, which he entered in 1818 and
advisors
completed his elementary studies in Lausanne.
Notable William Stimpson, William
Agassiz studied at the Universities of Zürich,
students Healey Dall, Carl Vogt,[1] David
Heidelberg and Munich. At the last one, he
Starr Jordan
extended his knowledge of natural history,
especially of botany. In 1829, he received the Author abbrev. Agassiz, Ag., L. Ag., Agass.
degree of doctor of philosophy at Erlangen and, in (zoology)
1830, that of doctor of medicine at Munich.[4] Signature
Moving to Paris, he came under the tutelage of
Alexander von Humboldt and later received his
financial benevolence.[5] Humboldt and Georges
Cuvier launched him on his careers of respectively
geology and zoology.[6] Ichthyology soon became a focus of Agassiz's life's work.[6]

Early work
In 1819 to 1820, the German biologists Johann Baptist von Spix
and Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius undertook an expedition to
Brazil. They returned home to Europe with many natural objects,
including an important collection of the freshwater fish of Brazil,
especially of the Amazon River. Spix, who died in 1826, likely
from a tropical disease, did not live long enough to work out the
history of those fish, and Martius selected Agassiz for this project.

Agassiz threw himself into the work with an enthusiasm that

would go on to characterize the rest of his life's work. The task of
describing the Brazilian fish was completed and published in
1829. It was followed by research into the history of fish found in
Lake Neuchâtel. Enlarging his plans, he in 1830 issued a
Agassiz in 1870 prospectus of a History of the Freshwater Fish of Central Europe.
In 1839, however, the first part of the publication appeared, and it
was completed in 1842.[4]

In November 1832, Agassiz was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Neuchâtel, at
a salary of about US$400 and declined brilliant offers in Paris because of the leisure for private study that
that position afforded him.[7] The fossil fish in the rock of the surrounding region, the slates of Glarus and
the limestones of Monte Bolca, soon attracted his attention. At the time, very little had been accomplished
in their scientific study. Agassiz as early as 1829, planned the publication of a work. More than any other,
it would lay the foundation of his worldwide fame. Five volumes of his Recherches sur les poissons
fossiles (Research on Fossil Fish) were published from 1833 to 1843. They were magnificently
illustrated, chiefly by Joseph Dinkel.[8] In gathering materials for that work, Agassiz visited the principal
museums in Europe. Meeting Cuvier in Paris, he received much encouragement and assistance from
him.[4]

In 1833, he married Cecile Braun, the sister of his friend Alexander Braun and established his household
at Neuchâtel. Trained to scientific drawing by her brothers, his wife was of the greatest assistance to
Agassiz, with some of the most beautiful plates in fossil and freshwater fishes being drawn by her.[7]

Agassiz found that his palaeontological analyses required a

new ichthyological classification. The fossils that he
examined rarely showed any traces of the soft tissues of fish
but instead, consisted chiefly of the teeth, scales, and fins,
with the bones being perfectly preserved in comparatively
few instances. He therefore adopted a classification that
divided fish into four groups (ganoids, placoids, cycloids,
and ctenoids), based on the nature of the scales and other
dermal appendages. That did much to improve fish
taxonomy, but Agassiz's classification has since been
superseded.[4]

With Louis de Coulon, both father and son, he founded the

Societé des Sciences Naturelles, of which he was the first
secretary and in conjunction with the Coulons also arranged
a provisional museum of natural history in the orphan's
home.[7] Agassiz needed financial support to continue his With Benjamin Peirce

work. The British Association and the Earl of Ellesmere,

then Lord Francis Egerton, stepped in to help. The 1290 original drawings made for the work were
purchased by the Earl and presented by him to the Geological Society of London. In 1836, the Wollaston
Medal was awarded to Agassiz by the council of that society for his work on fossil ichthyology. In 1838,
he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society. Meanwhile, invertebrate animals engaged his
attention. In 1837, he issued the "Prodrome" of a monograph on the recent and fossil Echinodermata, the
first part of which appeared in 1838; in 1839–1840, he published two quarto volumes on the fossil
echinoderms of Switzerland; and in 1840–1845, he issued his Études critiques sur les mollusques fossiles
(Critical Studies on Fossil Mollusks).[4]

Before Agassiz's first visit to England in 1834, Hugh Miller and other geologists had brought to light the
remarkable fossil fish of the Old Red Sandstone of the northeast of Scotland. The strange forms of
Pterichthys, Coccosteus, and other genera were then made known to geologists for the first time. They
were of intense interest to Agassiz and formed the subject of a monograph by him published in 1844–
1(45: Monographie des poissons fossiles du Vieux Grès Rouge, ou Système Dévonien (Old Red
Sandstone) des Îles Britanniques et de Russie (Monograph on Fossil Fish of the Old Red Sandstone, or
Devonian System of the British Isles and of Russia).[4] In the early stages of his career in Neuchatel,
Agassiz also made a name for himself as a man who could run a scientific department well. Under his
care, the University of Neuchâtel soon became a leading institution for scientific inquiry.

In 1842 to 1846, Agassiz issued his Nomenclator Zoologicus, a classification list with references of all
names used in zoological genera and groups.
He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in
1843.[9]

Ice age
The vacation of 1836 was spent by Agassiz and his wife in the little
village of Bex, where he met Jean de Charpentier and Ignaz Venetz. Their
recently announced glacial theories had startled the scientific world, and
Agassiz returned to Neuchâtel as an enthusiastic convert.[10] In 1837,
Agassiz proposed that the Earth had been subjected to a past ice age.[11]
He presented the theory to the Helvetic Society that ancient glaciers
Portrait photograph by John
flowed outward from the Alps, and even larger glaciers had covered the
Adams Whipple, circa 1865
plains and mountains of Europe, Asia, and North America and smothered
the entire Northern Hemisphere in a prolonged ice age. In the same year,
he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences. Before that proposal, Goethe, de Saussure, Ignaz Venetz, Jean
de Charpentier, Karl Friedrich Schimper, and others had studied the
glaciers of the Alps, and Goethe,[12] Charpentier, and Schimper[11] had
even concluded that the erratic blocks of alpine rocks scattered over the
slopes and summits of the Jura Mountains had been moved there by
glaciers. Those ideas attracted the attention of Agassiz, and he discussed
them with Charpentier and Schimper, whom he accompanied on
successive trips to the Alps. Agassiz even had a hut constructed upon one
of the Aar Glaciers and for a time made it his home to investigate the
structure and movements of the ice.[4]

Agassiz visited England, and with William Buckland, the only English
naturalist who shared his ideas, made a tour of the British Isles in search
of glacial phenomena, and became satisfied that his theory of an ice age
Nouvelles études et
was correct.[10] In 1840, Agassiz published a two-volume work, Études
expériences sur les glaciers
sur les glaciers ("Studies on Glaciers").[13] In it, he discussed the actuels, 1847
movements of the glaciers, their moraines, and their influence in grooving
and rounding the rocks and in producing the striations and roches
moutonnées seen in Alpine-style landscapes. He accepted Charpentier and Schimper's idea that some of
the alpine glaciers had extended across the wide plains and valleys of the Aar and Rhône, but he went
further by concluding that in the recent past, Switzerland had been covered with one vast sheet of ice
originating in the higher Alps and extending over the valley of northwestern Switzerland to the southern
slopes of the Jura. The publication of the work gave fresh impetus to the study of glacial phenomena in
all parts of the world.[14]

Familiar then with recent glaciation, Agassiz and the English geologist William Buckland visited the
mountains of Scotland in 1840. There, they found clear evidence in different locations of glacial action.
The discovery was announced to the Geological Society of London in successive communications. The
mountainous districts of England, Wales, and Ireland were understood to have been centres for the
dispersion of glacial debris. Agassiz remarked "that great sheets of ice, resembling those now existing in
Greenland, once covered all the countries in which unstratified gravel (boulder drift) is found; that this
gravel was in general produced by the trituration of the sheets of ice upon the subjacent surface, etc."[15]

In his later years, Agassiz applied his glacial theories to the geology of the Brazilian
tropics, including the Amazon. Agassiz began with a working hypothesis which could
be tested by the results of fieldwork to find either inconclusive, or conclusively
supporting or refuting evidence. A hypothesis that can be conclusively refuted is better
than a hypothesis that is difficult to test. Agassiz had a close association with his
student and field assistant, the geologist Charles Hartt who eventually refuted
Agassiz's theories about the Amazon based on his fieldwork there. Instead of evidence
for any glacial processes, he found chemically weathered sediments from marine and
tropical fluvial, not glacial, processes, a finding that later geologists confirmed.[16]
Agassiz hypothesis that the Amazon was affected by the Last Glacial Maximum was
correct, although the mechanism causing the effect was non-glacial. The Amazon
rainforest was split into two large blocks by extensive savanna during the LGM.

United States
With the aid of a grant of money from the king of Prussia, Agassiz crossed the Atlantic
in the autumn of 1846 to investigate the natural history and geology of North America
and to deliver a course of lectures on "The Plan of Creation as shown in the Animal
Kingdom"[17] by invitation from John Amory Lowell, at the Lowell Institute in The man-
Boston, Massachusetts. The financial offers that were presented to him in the United sized iron
auger that was
States induced him to settle there, where he remained to the end of his life.[15] He was
used by
elected a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Agassiz to drill
1846.[18] up to 7.5 m
deep into the
In 1846, still married to Cecilie, who remained with their three children in Unteraar
Switzerland, Agassiz met Elizabeth Cabot Cary at a dinner. The two developed a Glacier to take
romantic attachment, and when his wife died in 1848, they made plans to marry. The its
ceremony took place on April 25, 1850, in Boston, Massachusetts at King's Chapel. temperature
Agassiz brought his children to live with them, and Elizabeth raised and developed (Swiss Alpine
Museum,
close relationships with her step-children. She had no children of her own.[19]
Bern)

Agassiz had a mostly cordial relationship with the Harvard botanist Asa Gray despite
their disagreements.[20] Agassiz believed each human race had been separately created,[21] but Gray, a
supporter of Charles Darwin, believed in the shared evolutionary ancestry of all humans.[22] In addition,
Agassiz was a member of the Scientific Lazzaroni, a group of mostly physical scientists who wanted
American academia to mimic the more autocratic academic structures of European universities, but Gray
was a staunch opponent of that group.

Agassiz's engagement for the Lowell Institute lectures precipitated the establishment in 1847 of the
Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University, with Agassiz as its head.[23] Harvard appointed him
professor of zoology and geology, and he founded the Museum of Comparative Zoology there in 1859
and served as its first director until his death in 1873. During his tenure at Harvard, Agassiz studied the
effect of the last ice age in North America. In August 1857, Agassiz was offered the chair of
palaeontology in the Museum of Natural History, Paris, which he refused. He was later decorated with the
Cross of the Legion of Honor.[24]

Agassiz continued his lectures for the Lowell Institute. In succeeding years, he gave lectures on
"Ichthyology" (1847–1848), "Comparative Embryology" (1848–1849), "Functions of Life in Lower
Animals" (1850–1851), "Natural History" (1853–1854), "Methods of Study in Natural History" (1861–
1862), "Glaciers and the Ice Period" (1864–1865), "Brazil" (1866–1867), and "Deep Sea Dredging"
(1869–1870).[25] In 1850, he had married Elizabeth Cabot Cary, who later wrote introductory books
about natural history and a lengthy biography of her husband after he had died.[26]

Agassiz served as a nonresident lecturer at Cornell University while he was also on faculty at Harvard.[27]
In 1852, he accepted a medical professorship of comparative anatomy at Charlestown, Massachusetts, but
he resigned in two years.[15] From then on, Agassiz's scientific studies dropped off, but he became one of
the best-known scientists in the world. By 1857, Agassiz was so well-loved that his friend Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow wrote "The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz" in his honor and read it at a dinner given
for Agassiz by the Saturday Club in Cambridge.[15] Agassiz's own writing continued with four (of a
planned 10) volumes of Natural History of the United States, published from 1857 to 1862. He also
published a catalog of papers in his field, Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae, in four volumes between
1848 and 1854.[28][29][30][31]

Stricken by ill health in the 1860s, Agassiz resolved to return to the field for relaxation and to resume his
studies of Brazilian fish. In April 1865, he led the Thayer Expedition to Brazil. While there, he
commissioned two photographers, Augusto Stahl and Georges Leuzinger, to accompany the expedition
and produce somatological images of Indigenous people and enslaved Africans and Black people.[32]
After his return in August 1866, an account of the expedition, A Journey in Brazil,[33] was published in
1868. In December 1871, he made a second eight-month excursion, known as the Hassler expedition
under the command of Commander Philip Carrigan Johnson (the brother of Eastman Johnson) and visited
South America on its southern Atlantic and Pacific Seaboards. The ship explored the Magellan Strait,
which drew the praise of Charles Darwin.[34]

Following the establishment of the first U.S. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New
York City in 1866, Agassiz was called on to help settle disputes about animal behavior. He deemed the
way turtles were shipped caused them suffering, while P.T. Barnum argued with Agassiz' support that his
snakes would eat only live animals.[35]

His second wife, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, assisted him in preparing his A Journey in Brazil. Along with
her stepson, Alexander Agassiz, she wrote Seaside Studies in Natural History and Marine Animals of
Massachusetts.[24] Elizabeth wrote at the Strait that "the Hassler pursued her course, past a seemingly
endless panorama of mountains and forests rising into the pale regions of snow and ice, where lay
glaciers in which every rift and crevasse, as well as the many cascades flowing down to join the waters
beneath, could be counted as she steamed by them.... These were weeks of exquisite delight to Agassiz.
The vessel often skirted the shore so closely that its geology could be studied from the deck."[36]

Family
 From his first marriage to Cecilie Braun, Agassiz had two daughters, Ida
and Pauline, and a son, Alexander.[37] In 1863, Agassiz's daughter Ida
married Henry Lee Higginson, who later founded the Boston Symphony
Orchestra and was a benefactor to Harvard and other schools. On
November 30, 1860, Agassiz's daughter Pauline was married to Quincy
Adams Shaw (1825–1908), a wealthy Boston merchant and later a
benefactor to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.[38] Pauline Agassiz Shaw
later became a prominent educator, suffragist, and philanthropist.[39]

Agassiz in middle age

Later life
In the last years of his life, Agassiz worked to establish a permanent
school in which zoological science could be pursued amid the living subjects of its study. In 1873, the
private philanthropist John Anderson gave Agassiz the island of Penikese, in Buzzards Bay,
Massachusetts (south of New Bedford), and presented him with $50,000 to endow it permanently as a
practical school of natural science that would be especially devoted to the study of marine zoology.[15]
The school collapsed soon after Agassiz's death but is considered to be a precursor of the nearby Woods
Hole Marine Biological Laboratory.[40]

Agassiz had a profound influence on the American branches of his two fields and taught many future
scientists who would go on to prominence, including Alpheus Hyatt, David Starr Jordan, Joel Asaph
Allen, Joseph Le Conte, Ernest Ingersoll, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Nathaniel Shaler,
Samuel Hubbard Scudder, Alpheus Packard, and his son Alexander Emanuel Agassiz. He had a profound
impact on the paleontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott and the natural scientist Edward S. Morse. Agassiz
had a reputation for being a demanding teacher. He would allegedly "lock a student up in a room full of
turtle-shells, or lobster-shells, or oyster-shells, without a book or a word to help him, and not let him out
till he had discovered all the truths which the objects contained."[41] Two of Agassiz's most prominent
students detailed their personal experiences under his tutelage: Scudder, in a short magazine article for
Every Saturday,[42] and Shaler, in his Autobiography.[43] Those and other recollections were collected
and published by Lane Cooper in 1917,[44] which Ezra Pound would draw on for his anecdote of Agassiz
and the sunfish.[45]

In the early 1840s, Agassiz named two fossil fish species after Mary Anning (Acrodus anningiae and
Belenostomus anningiae) and another after her friend, Elizabeth Philpot. Anning was a paleontologist
known around the world for important finds, but because of her gender, she was often not formally
recognized for her work. Agassiz was grateful for the help that the women gave him in examining fossil
fish specimens during his visit to Lyme Regis in 1834.[46]

Agassiz died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1873 and was buried on the Bellwort Path at Mount
Auburn Cemetery,[47] joined later by his wife. His monument is a boulder from a glacial moraine of the
Aar near the site of the old Hôtel des Neuchâtelois, not far from the spot where his hut once stood. His
grave is sheltered by pine trees from his old home in Switzerland.[15]

Legacy
The Cambridge elementary school north of Harvard University was named in his honor, and the
surrounding neighborhood became known as "Agassiz" as a result. The school's name was changed to the
Maria L. Baldwin School on May 21, 2002, because of concerns about Agassiz's involvement in scientific
racism and to honor Maria Louise Baldwin, the African-American principal of the school, who served
from 1889 to 1922.[48][49] The neighborhood, however, continued to be known as Agassiz.[50] c. 2009,
neighborhood residents decided to rename the neighborhood's community council as the "Agassiz-
Baldwin Community".[51] Then, in July 2021, culminating a two-year effort on the part of neighborhood
residents, the Cambridge City Council voted unanimously to change the name to the Baldwin
Neighborhood.[52] An elementary school, the Agassiz Elementary School in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
existed from 1922 to 1981.[53]

Geological tributes
An ancient glacial lake that formed in central North America, Lake
Agassiz, is named after him, as are Mount Agassiz in California's
Palisades, Mount Agassiz in the Uinta Mountains of Utah, Agassiz Peak in
Arizona, Agassiz Rock in Massachusetts, and the Agassizhorn in the
Bernese Alps in his native Switzerland. Agassiz Glacier in Montana,
Agassiz Creek in Glacier National Park, Agassiz Glacier in the Saint Elias
Mountains of Alaska, and Mount Agassiz in the White Mountains of New
Hampshire also bear his name. A crater on Mars, Crater Agassiz,[54] and a
promontorium on the moon are also named in his honor. Cape Agassiz, a
headland situated in Palmer Land, Antarctica, is named in his honor. A
main-belt asteroid, 2267 Agassiz, is also named in association with him.
Agassiz's grave, Mount
Auburn Cemetery,
Biological tributes Cambridge, Massachusetts,
Several animal species are named in honor of him, including is a boulder from the
moraine of the Aar Glaciers,
Agassiz's dwarf cichlid Apistogramma agassizii Steindachner, near where he once lived.
1875;
Agassiz's perchlet, also known as Agassiz's glass fish; and the
olive perchlet Ambassis agassizii Steindachner, 1866;
The Spring Cavefish Forbesichthys agassizii (Putnam, 1872);
the catfish Corydoras agassizii Steindachner, 1876;
the Rio Skate Rioraja agassizii (J. P. Müller & Henle, 1841);
The South American fish Leporinus agassizii [55]
the Snailfish Liparis agassizii Putnam, 1874;
a sea snail, Borsonella agassizii (Dall, 1908);
a species of crab Eucratodes agassizii A. Milne Edwards, 1880;
Isocapnia agassizi Ricker, 1943 (a stonefly);
Publius agassizi (Kaup, 1871) (a passalid beetle);
Xylocrius agassizi (LeConte, 1861) (a longhorn beetle);
Exoprosopa agassizii Loew, 1869 (a bee fly);
Chelonia agassizii Bocourt, 1868 (Galápagos green turtle);[56]
Philodryas agassizii (Jan, 1863) (a South American snake);[56]
and the most well-known,

Gopherus agassizii (Cooper, 1863) (the desert tortoise).[56]

In 2020, a new genus of pycnodont fish (Actinopterygii, Pycnodontiformes) named
Agassazilia erfoundina (Cooper and Martill, 2020) from the Moroccan Kem Kem Group was
named in honor of Agassiz, who first identified the group in the 1830s.

Tribute awards
In 2005, the European Geosciences Union Division on Cryospheric Sciences established the Louis
Agassiz Medal, awarded to individuals in recognition of their outstanding scientific contribution to the
study of the cryosphere on Earth or elsewhere in the solar system.[57]

Agassiz took part in a monthly gathering called the Saturday Club at the Parker House, a meeting of
Boston writers and intellectuals. He was therefore mentioned in a stanza of the Oliver Wendell Holmes
Sr. poem "At the Saturday Club:"

There, at the table's further end I see

In his old place our Poet's vis-à-vis,
The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shouldered, square,
In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair
...

How will her realm be darkened, losing thee,

Her darling, whom we call our AGASSIZ!

Daguerreotypes of Renty and Delia Taylor

In 1850, Agassiz commissioned daguerreotypes, which were
described as "haunting and voyeuristic" of the enslaved Renty Taylor
and Taylor's daughter, Delia, to further his arguments about black
inferiority.[58] They are the earliest known photographs of enslaved
persons.[59][60][58][61] Agassiz left the images to Harvard, and they
remained in the Peabody Museum's attic until 1976, when they were
rediscovered by Ellie Reichlin, a former staff member.[62][63] The 15
daguerrotypes were in a case with the embossing "J. T. Zealy,
Photographer, Columbia," with several handwritten labels, which
helped in later identification.[63] Reichlin spent months doing
research to try to identify the people in the photos, but Harvard
University did not make efforts to contact the families and licensed
the photos for use.[63][64] Renty Taylor

In 2011, Tamara Lanier wrote a letter to the president of Harvard that

identified herself as a direct descendant of the Taylors and asked the university to turn over the photos to
her.[64][65]
In 2019, Taylor's descendants sued Harvard for the return of the images and unspecified damages.[66] The
lawsuit was supported by 43 living descendants of Agassiz, who wrote in a letter of support, "For Harvard
to give the daguerreotypes to Ms. Lanier and her family would begin to make amends for its use of the
photos as exhibits for the white supremacist theory Agassiz espoused." Everyone must evaluate fully "his
role in promoting a pseudoscientific justification for white supremacy."[59]

Aggasiz-Zeally Gallery

"Papa" Renty Taylor Delia (Born America); Delia daughter of Jack of Guinea, a
Born Congo, 1775- daughter of Renty on Renty on B.F. Taylor slave driver on B.F.
died on/after 1866. B.F. Taylor Plantation, Plantation, Columbia Taylor Plantation,
Field hand on B.F. Columbia South South Carolina Columbia South
Taylor Plantation, Carolina [Picture # 1] [Picture # 2] Carolina [Picture # 1]
Columbia South
Carolina [Note a side
profile picture can be
found at online article
"Louis Agassiz Two
Faces"]

Jack of Guinea, a Drana daughter of Drana daughter of Fassena a mandingo

slave driver on B.F. Jack on B.F. Taylor Jack on B.F. Taylor Carpender on Wade
Taylor Plantation, Plantation, Columbia Plantation, Columbia Hampton Plantation,
Columbia South South Carolina South Carolina South Carolina[Note
Carolina [Picture # 2] [Picture # 1] [Picture # 2] a full face picture can
be found at
https://saa3dm.org/20
21/11/16/1850]
 "Jem. A Gullah..B.W.
Green Plantation
[See American
Heritage June 1977
"Faces of Slavery"]

Polygenism and racism

Agassiz was a well-known natural scientist of his generation in
America.[68] In addition to being a natural scientist, Agassiz wrote
prolifically in the field of scientific polygenism after he came to
the United States.

Upon arriving in Boston in 1846, Agassiz spent a few months

acquainting himself with the northeast region of the United
States.[69] He spent much of his time with Samuel George Morton,
a famous American anthropologist at the time who became well
known by analyzing fossils brought back by Lewis and Clark.[70]
One of Morton’s personal projects involved studying cranial
capacity of human skulls from around the world. Morton aimed to
use craniometry to prove that white people were biologically
superior to other races. His work "Crania Aegyptiaca" claimed to
After the 1906 San Francisco earth­‐ support the polygenism belief that the races were created
quake toppled Agassiz's statue from separately and each had their own unique attributes.[71]
the façade of Stanford's zoology
building, Stanford President David Morton relied on other scientists to send him skulls along with
Starr Jordan wrote, "Somebody‍—‌Dr.
information about where they were acquired. Factors that can
Angell, perhaps‍—‌remarked that
'Agassiz was great in the abstract
affect cranial capacity, such as body size and gender, were not
but not in the concrete.' "[67]
taken into consideration by Morton.[70] He made questionable
judgment calls such as dismissing Hindu skull calculations from
his Caucasian cranial measurements because they brought the
overall average down. Oppositely, he included Peruvian skull measurements alongside Native American
calculations even though the Peruvian numbers lowered the average score. Despite Morton's unsound
methods, his published work on cranial capacities across races was deemed authoritative in the United
States and Europe. Morton is a primary influence on Agassiz's belief in polygenism.[70]

John Amory Lowell invited Agassiz to present twelve lectures in December 1846 on three subjects titled
"The Plan of Creation as shown in the Animal Kingdom, Ichthyology, and Comparative Embryology" as a
part of the Lowell Lecture series. These lectures were widely attended with up to 5,000 people in
attendance on some nights.[72] It was during these lectures that Agassiz announced for the first time that
black and white people had different origins but were part of the same species.[70] Agassiz repeated this
lecture 10 months later to the Charleston Literary Club but changed his original stance, claiming that
black people were physiologically and anatomically a distinct species.[70]

Agassiz believed that humans did not descend from one single common ancestor. He believed that like
plants and animals, various regions have differentiated species of humans.[69] He considered this
hypothesis testable, and matched to the available evidence. He also indicated that there were obvious
geographical barriers that were the likely cause of speciation.

Stephen Jay Gould asserted that Agassiz's observations sprang from racist bias, in particular from his
revulsion on first encountering African-Americans in the United States.[73] Referencing letters written by
Agassiz, Gould compares Agassiz' public display of dispassionate objectivity to his private
correspondence, in which he describes "the production of half breeds" as "a sin against nature..."
Describing the interbreeding of white and black people, he warns, "We have already had to struggle, in
our progress, against the influence of universal equality... but how shall we eradicate the stigma of a
lower race when its blood has once been allowed to flow freely into our children." In contrast, others
have asserted that, despite favoring polygenism, Agassiz rejected racism and believed in a spiritualized
human unity. However, in the same article, Agassiz asks the reader to consider the hierarchy of races,
mentioning "The indomitable, courageous, proud Indian, — in how very different a light he stands by the
side of the submissive, obsequious, imitative negro, or by the side of the tricky, cunning, and cowardly
Mongolian! Are not these facts indications that the different races do not rank upon one level in nature?"

Agassiz never supported slavery and claimed his views on polygenism had nothing to do with politics.[70]
His views on polygenism have been claimed to have emboldened proponents of slavery.

Accusations of racism against Agassiz have prompted the renaming of landmarks, schoolhouses, and
other institutions (which abound in Massachusetts) that bear his name. Opinions about those moves are
often mixed, given his extensive scientific legacy in other areas, and uncertainty about his actual racial
beliefs. In 2007, the Swiss government acknowledged his "racist thinking", but declined to rename the
Agassizhorn summit. In 2017, the Swiss Alpine Club declined to revoke Agassiz's status as a member of
honor, which he received in 1865 for his scientific work, because the club considered that status to have
lapsed on Agassiz's death. In 2020, the Stanford Department of Psychology asked for a statue of Louis
Agassiz to be removed from the front façade of its building. In 2021, Chicago Public Schools announced
they would remove Agassiz's name from an elementary school and rename it for the abolitionist and
political activist, Harriet Tubman. In 2022, The Trustees of Reservations renamed Agassiz Rock as The
Monoliths.[74]

Works
Recherches sur les poissons fossiles (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/4275)
(1833–1843)
History of the Freshwater Fishes of Central Europe (1839–1842)
Études sur les glaciers (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100170940) (1840)
Études critiques sur les mollusques fossiles (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/
1126) (1840–1845)
 Nomenclator Zoologicus (https://www.biodive
rsitylibrary.org/bibliography/49761) (1842–
1846)
Monographie des poissons fossiles du Vieux
Gres Rouge, ou Systeme Devonien (Old Red
Sandstone) des Iles Britanniques et de
Russie (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bib
liography/5752) (1844–1845)
Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae (https://
www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/2070
7) (1848)
(with A. A. Gould) Principles of Zoology for
the use of Schools and Colleges (https://arch
ive.org/details/principleszolog02goulgoog)
(Boston, 1848)
Lake Superior: Its Physical Character,
Vegetation and Animals, compared with Portrait of Louis Agassiz (1840)
those of other and similar regions (https://ww
w.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/1827)
(Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1850)
Contributions to the Natural History of the United States of America (https://www.biodiversity
library.org/bibliography/12644) (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1857–1862)
Geological Sketches (https://archive.org/details/geologicalsketc04agasgoog) (Boston:
Ticknor & Fields, 1866)
A Journey in Brazil (https://archive.org/details/journeyinbrazil00agas3) (1868)
De l'espèce et de la classification en zoologie (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliograph
y/21409) [Essay on classification] (Trans. Felix Vogeli. Paris: Bailière, 1869)
Geological Sketches (Second Series) (https://books.google.com/books?id=eczaAAAAMAA
J) (Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1876)
Essay on Classification (https://www.questia.com/library/book/essay-on-classification-by-loui
s-agassiz-edward-lurie.jsp), by Louis Agassiz (1962, Cambridge)

Taxa described by him

See Category:Taxa named by Louis Agassiz

See also
List of geologists

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Attribution:

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Archive sources
A collection of Louis Agassiz's professional and personal life is conserved in the State Archives of
Neuchâtel.

AGASSIZ LOUIS (https://floraweb.ne.ch/flora/ark:/37964/00175), Fonds: Louis Agassiz

(1817–1873). Archives de l'État de Neuchâtel.

External links
Publications by and about Louis Agassiz (https://nb-helveticat.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/disco
very/search?query=any,contains,%22Louis+Agassiz%22&tab=LibraryCatalog&search_scop
e=MyInstitution&vid=41SNL_51_INST:helveticat&lang=de&offset=0) in the catalogue
Helveticat of the Swiss National Library
Works by Louis Agassiz (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/1935) at Project
Gutenberg
Works by or about Louis Agassiz (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28subject%3
A%22Agassiz%2C%20Louis%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Louis%20Agassiz%22%20O
 R%20creator%3A%22Agassiz%2C%20Louis%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Louis%20Ag
assiz%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Agassiz%2C%20L%2E%22%20OR%20title%3A%22
Louis%20Agassiz%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Agassiz%2C%20Louis%22%20OR%
20description%3A%22Louis%20Agassiz%22%29%20OR%20%28%221807-1873%22%20
AND%20Agassiz%29%29%20AND%20%28-mediatype:software%29) at the Internet
Archive
Works by Louis Agassiz (https://librivox.org/author/362) at LibriVox (public domain
audiobooks)
Works by Louis Agassiz (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/creator/1366) online at the
Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Weisstein, Eric Wolfgang (ed.). "Agassiz, Jean (1807–1873)" (http://scienceworld.wolfram.c
om/biography/Agassiz.html). ScienceWorld.
Pictures and texts of Excursions et séjours dans les glaciers et les hautes régions des Alpes
(https://web.archive.org/web/20100811220546/http://www3.unil.ch/viatimages/index.php?m
odule=search&projet=viaticalpes#/ouvrage-141) and of Nouvelles études et expériences sur
les glaciers actuels (https://web.archive.org/web/20100811220546/http://www3.unil.ch/viati
mages/index.php?module=search&projet=viaticalpes#/ouvrage-135) by Louis Agassiz can
be found in the database VIATIMAGES.
"Geographical Distribution of Animals" (http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/biogeog/AGAS1850.ht
m) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20090622011725/http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/bi
ogeog/AGAS1850.htm) June 22, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, by Louis Agassiz (1850)
Runner of the Mountain Tops: The Life of Louis Agassiz, by Mabel Louise Robinson (1939)
– free download (http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/robinsonml/runner/runner.html) at A
Celebration of Women Writers – UPenn Digital Library
Thayer Expedition to Brazil, 1865–1866 (http://research.amnh.org/ichthyology/neoich/expedi
tions/thayer.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20090925070607/http://research.a
mnh.org/ichthyology/neoich/expeditions/thayer.html) September 25, 2009, at the Wayback
Machine (Agassiz went to Brazil to find glacial boulders and to refute Darwin. Dom Pedro II
gave his support for Agassiz's expedition on the Amazon River.)
Louis Agassiz Correspondence (https://web.archive.org/web/20120112155252/http://oasis.li
b.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/deepLink?_collection=oasis&uniqueId=hou00416&digital=y),
Houghton Library, Harvard University
Illustrations from 'Monographies d'échinodermes vivans et fossiles' (https://www.flickr.com/p
hotos/bibliodyssey/sets/72157613064476121/)
National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir (http://www.nasonline.org/publications/b
iographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/agassiz-louis.pdf)
Agassiz, Louis (1842) "The glacial theory and its recent progress" (http://lhldigital.lindahall.or
g/cdm/ref/collection/ice/id/1658) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20200708220551/htt
p://lhldigital.lindahall.org/cdm/ref/collection/ice/id/1658) July 8, 2020, at the Wayback
Machine The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, vol. 33. p. 217–283. (Linda Hall Library)
Agassiz, Louis (1863) Methods of study in natural history (http://lhldigital.lindahall.org/cdm/r
ef/collection/nat_hist/id/8523) – (Linda Hall Library)
Agassiz Rock, Edinburgh (http://www.scottishgeology.com/geo/regional-geology/midland-val
ley/agassiz-rock-edinburgh/) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20210121151635/https://
www.scottishgeology.com/geo/regional-geology/midland-valley/agassiz-rock-edinburgh/)
January 21, 2021, at the Wayback Machine – during a visit to Edinburgh in 1840, Agassiz
explained the striations on this rock's surface as due to glaciation
]

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