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Name: The Biographical Dictionary of America, Volume 1 — Agassiz, Jean Louis Rudolphe
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The Biographical Dictionary of America… (1906)

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“The Biographical Dictionary of America, Volume 1 — Agassiz, Jean Louis Rudolphe”, published in 1906, is a work by | editor. It explores elements such as Agassiz, Neuchâtel and fossil.

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| editor, The Biographical Dictionary of America… (1906)

“ This generosity was one of the incidents which determined Agassiz to remain in America. In 1848 the Lawrence scientific school was established at Cambridge by Mr. Abbott Lawrence, and Agassiz, having honorably cancelled his engagement with the King of Prussia, accepted the chair of natural history proffered him by the founder. Agassiz burst like a full-orbed sun upon the little coterie of American scientists, who at the time needed a leader, not only dazzling them, but holding their attention and winning their hearts. ”

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| editor, The Biographical Dictionary of America… (1906)

“ The surface of Europe, adorned before by a tropical vegetation and inhabited by troops of large elephants, enormous hippopotami, and gigantic carnivora, was suddenly buried under a vast mantle of ice, covering alike plains, lakes, seas, and plateaus. Upon the life and movement of a powerful creation fell the silence of death. ”

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| editor, The Biographical Dictionary of America… (1906)

“ His example of originating and putting into execution new projects soon revolutionized, not only the college with which he was connected, but other institutions of learning in America, and his vivifying influence awakened a universal interest in science. Harvard college was without either laboratory or collection to assist him in his class-room work, and an old bath-house was the very humble beginning whence sprang the Cambridge museum of comparative zoölogy, an enduring monument to the memory of him who was the moving spirit in its establishment. ”

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| editor, The Biographical Dictionary of America… (1906)

“ The vacation of 1836 was spent by Agassiz and his wife in the little village of Bex, where he met De Charpentier and Venetz, whose recently announced glacial theories had startled the scientific world, and Agassiz returned to Neuchâtel an enthusiastic convert. His conclusion that the earth had passed through an ice-age he announced at a meeting of the Helvetic society of natural sciences in 1837, and despite the incredulity and derision with which it was at first received, the address was afterwards published, and led to profitable investigation on the part of geologists. ”

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| editor, The Biographical Dictionary of America… (1906)

“ At the close of the year 1831, he was enabled through the generosity of friends and relatives to go to Paris. Here he met Cuvier, to whom he dedicated his "Brazilian Fishes." The great naturalist, after questioning him as to the scope of his projected work on fossil fishes, and seeing the collection of accurate and artistic drawings which Agassiz had prepared, not only permitted him to use his private laboratory, but relinquished his own intention of publishing a volume on the same subject, and placed at Agassiz's disposal his collected material, notes, and drawings. ”

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| editor, The Biographical Dictionary of America… (1906)

“ To Agassiz the organic world presented stages of dominant types created according to a definite, preconceived plan, and so distinct from each other that, however close the gradations of forms constituting the types might be, no evolutionary progress from one to the other could ever be possible. Of this series of types he regarded man, by reason of his cosmopolitanism, as the final term. Among his publications are: "Natural History of the Fresh-Water Fishes of Europe" (1839-'40) ; "Études sur les Glaciers" (1840) ; "Fossil Fishes of the Devonian System" (1844) ”

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| editor, The Biographical Dictionary of America… (1906)

“ A serious calamity at this time threatened Agassiz; his eyesight became seriously impaired, and he was obliged to live in a darkened room and to desist from writing for several months, which precautions effected a cure. In 1833 he married Cecile Braun, sister of his friend Alexander Braun, and established his household at Neuchâtel. Trained to scientific drawing by her brothers, his wife was of the greatest assistance to Agassiz, some of the most beautiful plates in "Fossil" and "Fresh-Water Fishes" being drawn by her. ”

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| editor, The Biographical Dictionary of America… (1906)

“ Guided by Professor Buckland he visited every public and private collection in the country, being treated with the greatest generosity by the English naturalists, who loaned to him two thousand specimens of fossil fishes selected from sixty collections, which he was allowed to take to London and classify and arrange in a room at Somerset House placed at his disposal by the geological society. ”

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