Louis John Rudolph Agassiz was a Swiss geologist and zoologist. He was born in 1807 and died in 1873. The son of a Swiss Protestant clergyman at Metiers, near the eastern extremity of the Lake of Neufchatel. He completed his education at Lausanne, and early developed a love of the natural sciences. He studied medicine at Zurich, Heidelberg, and Munich. His attention was first specially directed to ichthyology by being called on to describe the Brazilian fishes brought to Europe from Brazil by Martius and Spix. This work was published in 1829, and was followed in 1830 by Histoire Naturelle des Poissons d'eaux donees de L'Europe Centrale (Freshwater Fishes of Central Europe). Directing his attention to fossil ichthyology, five volumes of his Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles appeared between 1834 and 1844. His researches led him to propose a new classification of fishes, which he divided into four classes, distinguished by the characters of the skin, as ganoids, placoids, cycloids, and ctenoids. His system was not generally adopted, but the names of his classes have been used as useful terms. In 1836 he began the study of glaciers, and in 1840 he published his Etudes sur les Glaciers, in 1847 his Systeme Glaciaire. From 1838 he had been professor of natural history at Neufchatel, when in 1846 pressing solicitations and attractive offers induced him to settle in America, where he was connected as a teacher first with Harvard University, Cambridge, and latterly with Cornell University as well as Harvard. After his arrival in America he engaged in various investigations and explorations, and published numerous works, including: Principles of Zoology, in connection with Dr. A. Gould (1848); Contributions to the Natural History of the United States (four volumes 1857-1862);
Zoologie Generale (1854); Methods of Study in Natural History (1863). In 1865-1866 he made zoological excursions and investigations in Brazil, which were productive of most valuable results. Louis Agassiz held views on many important points in science different from those which prevailed among the scientific men of the day, and in particular he strongly opposed the theory of evolution. Research Louis Agassiz
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