Jean louis rodolphe agassiz biography sample

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His work on glaciers revolutionized geology, and drove another nail in the coffin of the Biblical Flood as a serious scientific hypothesis. The "lowest" forms were first found lowest in the rock record, their morphological features appeared earliest in embryonic development, and they are distributed today at the highest latitudes. Receiving his medical degree from the University of Erlangen in 1830, he went to Paris on December 16, 1831 to study comparative anatomy under Cuvier, the most famous naturalist in Europe.

Under his care, the University of Neuchâtel soon became a leading institution for scientific inquiry. He left a mark on the development and the practice of American science, and brought science to "the man in the street" as no one else had before. He therefore adopted a classification which divided fish into four groups: Ganoids, Placoids, Cycloids, and Ctenoids, based on the nature of the scales and other dermal appendages.

His dedication to collecting and analyzing data, both in the field and in museums, allowed him to identify new genera of fossil fish.

Influence on American Science and Education

Louis Agassiz’s move to the United States in 1846 impacted American scientific institutions and education. Natural theology had once inspired countless scientists, including Darwin and his forerunners, but by the time of publication of The Origin of Species it had largely run out of steam, unable to offer any real explanation for natural phenomena except "God made it that way." Within Agassiz's lifetime, and much to his grief, most of his students — including his son Alexander, a well-known naturalist in his own right — became evolutionists, though not necessarily Darwinians.

Agassiz's idea of the "three-fold parallelism" — that the order of appearance of animals in the fossil record largely mirrors the order of appearance of their morphological features during the development of animals, and that this in turn mirrors the arrangement of their phylogenetic relationships — was not strictly accepted even in his day, although many facts are consistent with it.

But Agassiz was also physically revulsed by the idea that all humans were equal. 2002. This differed from the view of Cuvier, who recognized extensive and sometimes apparently quite abrupt changes in fossil faunas and their environments. In 1829, he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Erlangen, and in 1830 that of doctor of medicine at Munich.

During this time he also published a catalog of papers in his field, Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae, in four volumes between 1848 and 1854.

In 1859, he founded the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) at Harvard, serving as its first director. Cuvier did not think that God re-created life; he thought that new species migrated in from elsewhere as climates and environments changed.

Agassiz's works on living and fossil fishes and on glaciers have remained classics. 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 Etudes critiques sur les mollusques fossiles ("Critical Studies on Fossil Mollusks").

This was the legacy of Naturphilosophie on Agassiz. Cornell University Press, 1962. In 1871, he made a second excursion, visiting the southern shores of North America, both on its Atlantic and its Pacific seaboards. Scientifically, however, he was being left behind by his absolute rejection of evolution and his insistence on glaciers as a major force that shaped geology worldwide.

Agassiz was also being left behind by his racist attitudes, which were extreme even for his day.

Stricken by ill health in the 1860s, he resolved to return to the field partly for relaxation, and partly to take up his studies of Brazilian fishes once again. He was therefore mentioned in a stanza of the Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. poem, "At the Saturday Club," where the author dreams he sees some of his friends who are no longer:

"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.
His social hour no leaden care alloys,
His laugh rings loud and mirthful as a boy's,—
That lusty laugh the Puritan forgot,—
What ear has heard it and remembers not?
How often, halting at some wide crevasse
Amid the windings of his Alpine pass,
High up the cliffs, the climbing mountaineer,
Listening the far-off avalanche to hear,
Silent, and leaning on his steel-shod staff,
Has heard that cheery voice, that ringing laugh,
From the rude cabin whose nomadic walls
Creep with the moving glacier as it crawls!

How does vast Nature lead her living train
In ordered sequence through that spacious brain,
As in the primal hour when Adam named
The new-born tribes that young creation claimed!--
How will her realm be darkened, losing thee,
Her darling, whom we call our AGASSIZ!"

Works

• Recherches sur les poissons fossiles (1833-1843)
• History of the Freshwater Fishes of Central Europe (1839-1842)
• Etudes sur les glaciers (1840)
• Etudes critiques sur les mollusques fossiles (1840-1845)
• Nomenclator Zoologicus (1842-1846)
• Monographie des poissons fossiles du Vieux Gres Rouge, ou Systeme Devonien (Old Red Sandstone) des Iles Britanniques et de Russie (1844-1845)
• Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae (1848)
• (with AA Gould) Principles of Zoology for the use of Schools and Colleges (Boston, 1848)
• Lake Superior: Its Physical Character, Vegetation and Animals, compared with those of other and similar regions (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1850)
• Natural History of the United States (Boston: Little, Brown, 1847-1862)
• Geological Sketches ((Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1866)
• A Journey in Brazil (1868)
• De l' espèce et de la classification en zoologie [Essay on classification] (Trans.

  The fossil fish there soon attracted his attention.