The concept of "Transformation" existed before Charles Darwin. Contemporaries such as Agassiz held to the old age of the earth and fossil record. Stripped away, Darwin is left with little of his own creation, not the "renegade scientist" some have made him out to be. Charles Darwin |
AGASSIZ, LOUIS JEAN RODOLPHE (1807-1873), Swiss-American naturalist, born at Motiers, Switzerland. He studied medicine and natural history at Zurich, Heidelberg, Erlangen, and Munich. In 1826 he prepared a description of Brazilian fishes from materials collected by the Bavarian naturalist, Spix, a work which attracted the notice of Cuvier, with whom Agassiz afterward studied in Paris. From 1832 to 1846 Agassiz was professor of natural history of Neuchatel. During this time (1832-42) he prepared and published his Researches on Fossil Fishes (5 vols., 311 plates). Repeated visits to England gave him material for his work Fossil Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone (1844). He spent the summers of this period in studying the glaciers of the Alps, which gave him material for his works, Studies of Glaciers (1840) and The Glacial System (1847), in which he advanced views then new in geology, including his theory of a "glacial epoch," which attracted great attention and interest. In 1846 Agassiz delivered a course of lectures at Lowell Institute, Boston, which resulted in his appointment in 1848 as Professor of Natural History in the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, which position he held until his death, except for 2 years (1852-54) spent at Charleston, although his later life was given |
to lecturing and exploration, rather than to teaching. In opposition to the Darwinian theory of evolution, Agassiz held to "epochs of creation." His explorations in the United States included the Lake Superior region (1848) and the Florida coral reefs (1850-51). From 1865-1866 he was in Brazil and published his researches there under the title of A Journey in Brazil (1868). In 1872 he made a journey to California around Cape Horn. In 1873 he held the first session of the summer school of zoology on Peniske, Is., Buzzards Bay, Mass. He was buried at Mt. Auburn, where his monument is a boulder from the Swiss glacier of the Aar. - Republished from Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia, ©1950 |