THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



5i5 



THE PEOGEESS OF SCIENCE 



THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER 

 AGASSIZ 



In the death of Alexander Agassiz, 

 America loses its foremost naturalist, 

 as a few months ago in the death of 

 Simon Newccmb it lost its most emi- 

 nent representative of the exact sci- 

 ences. Both were born in the year 

 1835, and in a century preeminent for 

 science both gave distinction to this 

 country when it was relatively back- 

 ward in scientific productivity. Each 

 maintained his intellectual leadership 

 and continued his researches and pub- 

 lications to the very end of a long life. 

 America is no longer behind the nations 

 of Europe in the number of its scien- 

 tific workers, but among them all are 

 none to take the places left vacant by 

 Agassiz and Newcomb. 



Alexander Agassiz was endowed at 

 birth with the heritage of his great 

 father, Louis Agassiz, whose work at 

 Harvard he carried forward. Born in 

 Switzerland, he came to the United 

 States in 1849 at the age of fourteen 

 and graduated from Harvard Colleoe 

 in 1855, continuing graduate studies in 

 mining and chemistry in the Lawrence 

 Scientific School. In 1859 he went to 

 California as an assistant on the coast 

 survey and in the following year be- 

 came assistant in the museum founded 

 by Louis Agassiz, during whose absence 

 in Brazil he was in charge. From 1866 

 to 1869 he was engaged in mining in 

 the Lake Superior region and became 

 superintendent of the Calumet and 

 Hecla copper mines of which he was 

 president at the time of his death. He 

 thus acquired abundant wealth, and 

 was able to give more than half a mil- 

 lion dollars to the Harvard Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology and to conduct 

 as he wished his oceanographical ex- 

 peditions. 



In 1869 Mr. Agassiz visited European 

 museums and on his return in 1870 

 renewed his duties at the Harvard 

 Museum, of which he became curator 

 and director on the death of Louis 

 Agassiz in 1873. He was for a series 

 of years one of the seven fellows who 

 form the corporation of Harvard Col- 

 lege, and was on two occasions elected 

 an overseer. In 1875 he visited the 

 western coast of South America and 

 subsequently went to England to assist 

 with the reports of the Challenger 

 expedition, writing the monograph on 

 the Echini. Previously and subse- 

 quently to the end of his life, he made 

 a great number of valuable scientific 

 contributions to marine zoology, the 

 embryology of fishes and coral reefs. 

 In awarding to him its Victoria re- 

 search medal, the report of the Royal 

 Geographical Society said " he has 

 done more for oceanographical research 

 than any other single individual " and 

 summed up his work by noting that 

 for thirty years he had carried out 

 personally oceanographical expeditions 

 over most of the oceans of the world. 

 In 1877-80 he explored the Florida 

 Straits and Gulf of Mexico, the At- 

 lantic Coast and the Caribbean Sea. 

 In 1880 he studied the surface fauna 

 of the Gulf Stream; in 1892-4 he in- 

 vestigated the Sandwich Islands, study- 

 ing recent and extinct reefs. In 1891 

 he conducted three cruises off the West 

 Coast of Central America, and in 

 1895-6 he studied the Great Barrier 

 Reef of Australia and in 1897-8 the 

 Fiji Islands. In 1899-1900 he carried 

 out a cruise from San Francisco via 

 the Coral Island groups to Japan. In 

 1904-5 he investigated the eastern 

 tropical Pacific. In the Indian Ocean 

 in 1901-2 he devoted himself to the 

 Maldive Islands. In 1874-5 he investi- 



