Louis Agassiz, to Monsieur with Love
By Bree D. Harvey, Director of Education & Visitor Services
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of naturalist and educator Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz. Born the son of a Protestant clergyman in Switzerland, Louis Agassiz studied medicine and natural history at universities in Europe. Upon graduation he produced a colossal work on fossil fishes— identifying and illustrating more than 1,200 species at a time when few fossil fish had even been named. In 1840, after studying the movement of the Aar glacier in Switzerland, he published what is considered his most important scientific work, Études sur les glaciers( Studies of Glaciers). This introduced his idea of the“ Ice Age,” a period when much of the globe was enveloped with thick sheets of ice. By the time he immigrated to America in 1846, he was already a well-known naturalist.
Upon arriving in this country Agassiz was invited to Boston to deliver a series of scientific lectures at the Lowell Institute. The following year he accepted a newly created professorship in natural history at Harvard’ s Lawrence Scientific School. Agassiz modernized the study of the natural world at Harvard by encouraging his students to use the outdoors as their scientific laboratory and to rely on first-hand observation when doing their research rather than on rote memorization. His interest in expanding Harvard’ s collection of zoological specimens led to his founding the Museum of Comparative Zoology in 1859. Agassiz donated his personal collection of specimen fish, insects, and other species gathered from travels to the museum’ s collection.
In 1850 Agassiz married Elizabeth Cary, the sister-in-law of Cornelius Felton, the Greek scholar who later became Harvard president. Like her husband, Elizabeth Agassiz was
deeply interested in education. Between 1856 and 1865, the couple ran a small school for girls, known as the Agassiz School, in their Cambridge home. Agassiz taught the school’ s science courses and recruited several of his Harvard colleagues to offer lessons in other subjects.
Agassiz continued his studies in zoology, taking part in maritime surveys along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and participating in a two-year expedition to Brazil. He died in December 1873 and was buried at Mount Auburn in the Cary family lot with members of his wife’ s family. A 2,500-pound boulder from the Aar Glacier near the site of his geological studies— a gift by the Republic of Switzerland— was placed at his grave as his monument. After her husband’ s death, Elizabeth Agassiz championed the cause of education for young women. Her efforts eventually led to the founding of Radcliffe College.
( Above, right) A boulder from his native Switzerland marks the Mount Auburn grave of Louis Agassiz( 1807-1873) in the Bellwort Path family lot of his wife Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, also buried there. Photo by Jennifer Johnston.
( Above) Louis Agassiz in his library, 1861( from Life, Letters, and Works of Louis Agassiz, MacMillan and Co., New York, 1896).
Fall 2007 | 9