NATURE 



573 



THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 1879 



SCIENTIFIC WORTHIES 



XIV.— Jean Louis Rodoi.phe Agassiz, Born May 28, 



1807; Died December 14, 1873 



LOUIS AGASSIZ, by which names he was every- 

 where known, was bom at Motier, in the canton 

 of Freiberg, Switzerland, on May 28, 1807. He belonged 

 to an old French Protestant family, who had been com- 

 pelled to quit their native country by the revocation of 

 the Edict of Nantes, we are told by Dr. Steindachner, in 

 his paper on Agassiz, contributed to the Vienna Aca- 

 demy, to which we are largely indebted for what follows. 

 His father was pastor at Motier, where his forefathers 

 for six generations had filled the same office. Agassiz 

 received his earliest education at home under the care of 

 his mother, a woman of high endowments and rare cul- 

 ture. At the age of eleven years he betook himself with 

 his younger brothers to the Gymnasium at Biel, in the 

 canton of Bern, where he was mainly occupied with the 

 study of ancient and modern languages, the knowledge 

 of which proved of important service to him in his later 

 biological investigations. His play-hours he devoted to 

 fishing and the collecting of insects. Thus early did his 

 leaning towards ichthyological researches show itself, and 

 his knowledge of the habits of fish often astonished even 

 experienced fishermen. 



In the meantime Agassiz' s father was transferred from 

 Motier to the little town of Orbe at the foot of the Jura, 

 and here young Agassiz became intimate during the holi- 

 days with a young clergyman named Fivaz, who first 

 introduced him to the study of natural history, and espe- 

 cially botany. After four years' stay at Biel he entered 

 the Academy of Lausanne, and in 1824 betook himself 

 to Zurich to study medicine, in accordance with the 

 earnest desire of his parents. Soon after, Agassiz left 

 Switzerland to continue his medical studies at Heidel- 

 berg, where, at that time, the celebrated anatomist, Tide- 

 mann, carried on his work. After a year's stay Agassiz 

 exchanged Heidelberg for Munich, where Schelling, Oken, 

 Martins, Dollinger, Wagler, Zuccarini, Fuchs, von Kobell, 

 &c., were lecturing; and these soon became not only the 

 kind teachers, but also the friends of young Agassiz. 

 Dollinger, especially, the great master in physiology and 

 embryology soon recognised the high talent of his pupil, 

 and ripened in Agassiz a long-cherished plan of devoting 

 himself to zoology in the widest sense of the term. 



It was here in Munich that the young Agassiz, who 

 occupied a small room in Dollinger's house, soon gathered 

 around him a circle of young and talented students, to 

 talk over and discuss matters of scientific interest. 

 Agassiz's room was the meeting-place of this club, which 

 soon assumed the title of the Little Academy, and of which 

 Agassiz acted as president. Before this society did 

 Michaelis lay the results of his researches in the Adriatic 

 Sea, Bom exhibited his beautiful preparations of the 

 anatomy of the lamprey, Rudolpbi lectured to the students 

 on the Bavarian Alps and the coasts of the Baltic, and 

 Schimper and Braun here first expounded the laws of 

 phyllotaxis. Dollinger himself did not disdain to initiate 

 his disciples and friends of this Little Academy in his 

 newest discoveries and ideas, ere he made them known 

 Vol. xix.—No. 495 



to the scientific world, and here he taught them the use 

 of the microscope in embrj'ological research. 



Meantime the Bavarian members of a great scientific 

 expedition to Brazil, under the leadership of Spix and 

 Martius, returned to Munich, bringing with them rich 

 collections ; and after the death of Spix, the celebrated 

 botanist, Martius entrusted Agassiz with the v/nrking out 

 of the ichthyological material, Agassiz had scarcely 

 reached his twenty-first year when he concluded this task 

 in so brilliant a fashion that with this, his first-bom 

 work, on the Fishes of Brazil, he gained a reputation as 

 one of the first ichthyologists. This work was published 

 in Latin at Munich in the year 1829, and was dedicated 

 to Cuvier. About the same time Agassiz began his in- 

 vestigations on fossil fishes. The immediate occasion 

 of this step was a short notice by Prof. Rud. Wagner on 

 the fossils of the Munich Museum, in which he praised 

 the number and beauty of the unnoticed fossil fishes. 

 Agassiz immediately applied to Prof. Fuchs, who had the 

 care of the palaeontological collection, for permission to 

 investigate the ichthyolites in detail ; Professors Wagler 

 and Schubert placed freely at his disposal the collection 

 of recent fishes and their skeletons, and Dollinger, Oken, 

 and Martius in various ways encouraged him in this 

 difficult undertaking. 



From this time Agassiz devoted all the spare time left 

 him by his medical studies to the investigation of fossil 

 fishes, which naturally implied an adequate knowledge of 

 the most nearly related living forms; in the holiday 

 months he made short visits to the museums of the larger 

 towns of Central Germany, to examine their palaeonto- 

 logical treasures. In 1830 Agassiz went to Vienna, where 

 he stayed a year, attending at the hospitals, and studying 

 in the Imperial Museum the splendid collection of 

 sturgeons of the Danube region, as well as the fossil 

 fishes of Monte Balca. Moreover, he was so interested 

 in the Cyprinoids of the Danube, ^which were already 

 partly known to him from those of the Isar, that he con- 

 cluded a work on the Freshwater Fishes of Central 

 Europe; on account of the revolution of July, 1830, this 

 work was not published. 



The years 1831 and 1832 Agassiz spent in France, and 

 in Paris had much pleasant intercourse with Cuvier and 

 Alex, von Humboldt. Cuvier was then giving a course of 

 lectures on the history of natural science, and combated 

 with all the power of his science and his detailed know- 

 ledge of the organic structvure of the whole animal world 

 the development theory of Geoffroy based on the varia- 

 bility of species, which the latter defended in the sittings 

 of the Paris Academy. From this time Agassiz adhered 

 to Cuvier's ideas on the classification of the animal 

 kingdom and on creation catastrophes especially, and 

 with but little modification, defended them in his teach- 

 ing and writing to the end of his life. 



In Humboldt, again, Agassiz found an attached and 

 powerful patron, whose support at a later time essentially 

 facilitated the publication of many of his costly works, 

 and to whose recommendation he in part owed the 

 brilliant reception he met with in America, which he 

 chose as his second home. 



The Paris Museum was then in the zenith of its reputa- 

 tion ; its zoological, palaeontological, and anatomical 

 collections were then the richest and most celebrated of 



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