TH E 
Sor LAR SsCluNn CE 
EOIN SD Tat XY, 
NOVEMBER, 1910 


ALEXANDER AGASSIZ, 1835-1910 
By ALFRED GOLDSBOROUGH MAYER 
MARINE LABORATORY OF THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION, TORTUGAS, FLA, 
Fo ees EMMANUEL RODOLPHE AGASSIZ, only son 
of Louis Agassiz, was born at N euchatel, 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 possessor 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 ances- 
tors 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 numer- 
ous elaborate monographs with their hundreds of illustrations 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 Amer- 
ica, 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. 
