Archives West Finding Aid

Swiss-American zoologist and geologist. Professor of zoology and geology at Harvard University. Louis Agassiz was born in Môtier-en-Vuly, Switzerland. He studied at the universities of Zürich, Erlangen (Ph.D., 1829), Heidelberg, and Munich (M.D., 1830). Agassiz studied medicine briefly but turned to zoology, with a special interest in fishes and fossils, while studying under the French naturalist Cuvier. In 1832 he became professor of natural history at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. During this period Agassiz published Recherches sur les poissons fossiles (5 vol. and atlas, 183344), various studies of fossil echinoderms and mollusks, and Étude sur les glaciers (1840), one of the first descriptions of glacial movements and glacial deposits. Agassiz arrived in the United States in 1846 and accepted the professorship of zoology and geology at Harvard University in 1848. Among his areas of interest were Amazonian ichthyology and deep-sea studies of the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of the United States. Agassiz was instrumental in founding the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, in 1860.