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100 YEARS EXPLORING LIFE, 1888-1988 



A tremendous popular success, Louis Agassiz liked the United States 

 and determined; after the death of his first wife, to settle in Boston. There 

 he married Elizabeth Cabot Gary, later president of Radcliffe College. In 

 1847 he became established at Harvard University, where he founded the 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology. Always an opponent of evolution, his 

 students once suggested to him that a debate between evolutionists and 

 nonevolutionists might prove illuminating, all in the spirit of open scientific 

 discussion and the search for truth, of course. Agassiz reportedly responded 

 "rather evasively" that "personally I like Mr. Darwin very much; he is my 

 friend." Someone then pointed out that "Darwin's son Frank [Francis] was 

 once told that Agassiz did not accept evolution. 'That's all right,' said Frank, 

 'father does not believe in the glacial theory.' " Agassiz was very proud of his 

 glacial theory, which held that much of the geological change tliat the earth 

 has experienced has resulted from the cycling of glacial epochs. Apparently 

 Agassiz chose not to pursue the discussion further at that point. 



Three sketches from Frank Leslie's journal of 

 August 23, 1873, showing scenes from the 

 Anderson School of Natural History at Penikese: 

 Louis Agassiz at the blackboard mf/i chalk in hand, 

 gentlemen dissecting a fish, and a room in the 

 ladies' dormitory. Drawings by Albeit Berghaus, 

 MBL Archives. 





