ALEXANDER AGASSIZ, 1835-1910. 1 



[With 1 plate.] 



By Alfred Goldsborough Mayer, 

 Marine laboratory of the Carnegie Institution, Tortugas, Fla. 



Alexander Emmanuel Rodolphe Agassiz, only son of Louis 

 Agassiz, was born at Neuchatel, Switzerland, on December 17, 1835. 



The great English statistician Galton found that men who attain 

 eminence in science are nearly always sons of remarkable women, 

 and Alexander Agassiz was no exception to this rule. His mother 

 was Cecile Braun, the daughter of the postmaster general of the 

 Grand Duchy of Baden, who was a geologist of note and the pos- 

 sessor of the largest collection of minerals in Germany. Cecile 

 Braun was a woman of culture and an artist of exceptional ability, 

 and she was the first who labored to illustrate the early works of 

 Louis Agassiz, some of the best plates in the " Poissons fossiles " 

 being by her hand. Her brother, Alexander Braun, after whom 

 her son was named, was a distinguished botanist and philosopher, 

 and another brother, Max Braun, was an eminent mining engineer 

 and geologist and the director of the largest zinc mine in Europe. 

 Thus we find that intellectual superiority was characteristic of both 

 the paternal and maternal ancestors of Alexander Agassiz. 



After the birth of her son sorrow came upon the family, for the 

 heavy expenses demanded by the publication of Louis Agassiz's 

 numerous elaborate monographs, with their hundreds of illustra- 

 tions, had exhausted not only their author's means, but had drained 

 the resources of the entire community of Neuchatel in so far as they 

 could be enlisted for the cause of science. Thus in March, 1846, 

 Louis Agassiz was forced to leave Neuchatel and to begin the long 

 journey toward America, where he found a wider field for his great 

 endeavors. Before his wife or children could follow him to his new 

 home she died in 1848, after a lingering illness. 



I cite these events because they show that the early youth of Alex- 

 ander Agassiz was passed in a period of domestic confusion and sor- 

 row, which may have left its mark upon him throughout life, for his 



1 Reprinted by permission from the Popular Science Monthly, vol. 76, No. 5, Nov., 

 1910. 



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