Alexander Emmanuel Rodolphe Agassiz ( December 17, 1835 – March 27, 1910 ), son of Louis Agassiz and stepson of Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz, was an American scientist and engineer.

The ancient jawless fish Cephalaspis lyelli, which dwelt in the lochs of Scotland, was named by Louis Agassiz in honour of Lyell.

It is thought that this event was caused by the final drainage of Lake Agassiz, which had been confined by the glaciers, disrupting the thermohaline circulation of the Atlantic.

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz ( May 28, 1807 – December 14, 1873 ) was a Swiss paleontologist, glaciologist, geologist and a prominent innovator in the study of the Earth's natural history.

Louis Agassiz was born in Môtier ( now part of Haut-Vully ) in the canton of Fribourg, Switzerland.

Stanford President David Starr Jordan later wrote, " Somebody – Dr. Angell, perhaps – remarked that ' Agassiz was great in the abstract but not in the concrete.

Spix, who died in 1826, did not live long enough to work out the history of these fish, and Agassiz ( though fresh out of school ) was selected by Martius for this purpose.

In 1836 the Wollaston Medal was awarded to Agassiz by the council of that society for his work on fossil ichthyology ; and in 1838 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society.

Agassiz was grateful for the help the women had given him in examining fossil fish specimens during his visit to Lyme Regis in 1834.

In 1837 Agassiz was the first to scientifically propose that the Earth had been subject to a past ice age.

Thus familiarized with the phenomena associated with the movements of recent glaciers, Agassiz was prepared for a discovery which he made in 1840, in conjunction with William Buckland.

The mountainous districts of England, Wales, and Ireland were also considered to constitute centres for the dispersion of glacial debris ; and Agassiz remarked " that great sheets of ice, resembling those now existing in Greenland, once covered all the countries in which unstratified gravel ( boulder drift ) is found ; that this gravel was in general produced by the trituration of the sheets of ice upon the subjacent surface, etc.

From this time his scientific studies dropped off, but he was a profound influence on the American branches of his two fields, teaching decades worth of future prominent scientists, including Alpheus Hyatt, David Starr Jordan, Joel Asaph Allen, Joseph Le Conte, Ernest Ingersoll, William James, Nathaniel Shaler, Samuel Hubbard Scudder, Alpheus Packard, and his son Alexander Agassiz, among others.

By 1857 he was so well-loved that his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote " The fiftieth birthday of Agassiz " in his honor.

Quincy Adams Shaw and his brother-in-law Henry Higginson became major investors in the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, and Shaw was the first president of the company and retained that position until 1871, when Agassiz's son Alexander Agassiz took over.

The Cambridge elementary school north of Harvard University was named in his honor and the surrounding neighborhood became known as " Agassiz " as a result.

Agassiz was specifically a believer and advocate in polygenism, that races came from separate origins ( specifically separate creations ), were endowed with unequal attributes, and could be classified into specific climatic zones, in the same way he felt other animals and plants could be classified.

Agassiz was never a supporter of slavery he claimed his views had nothing to do with politics.

Agassiz was influenced by philosophical idealism and the scientific work of Georges Cuvier.

Agassiz was a creationist who believed nature had order because God has created it directly and Agassiz viewed his career in science for the search of ideas in the mind of the creator expressed in creation.

* Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz, born Elizabeth Cabot Cary, ( 1822 – 1907 ), American educator

* December 14-Louis Agassiz ( born 1807 ), zoologist and geologist.

In 1839, he became the colleague of Agassiz as professor of history and physical geography at the College of Neuchâtel ( a. k. a. Neuchâtel Academy ?).

In 1842, during his time with Louis Agassiz in Neuchâtel, he discovered the mechanism of apoptosis, the programmed cell death, while studying the development of the tadpole of the midwife toad ( Alytes obstetricians ).

An ancient glacial lake that formed in the Great Lakes region of North America, Lake Agassiz, is named after him, as are Mount Agassiz in California's Palisades, Mount Agassiz, in the Uinta Mountains, Agassiz Peak in Arizona and in his native Switzerland, the Agassizhorn in the Bernese Alps.

In addition, Louis Agassiz of Switzerland established his reputation through the study of freshwater fish and organisms and the pioneering of paleoichthyology.

His attention was directed to the question of the flow of glaciers in 1840 when he met Louis Agassiz at the Glasgow meeting of the British Association, and in subsequent years he made several visits to Switzerland, where he was particularly impressed by Bernhard Studer's theories, and also to Norway for the purpose of obtaining accurate data.

In 1847 he went to North America as travelling geologist for the Jardin des Plantes, and in the following year in Boston he joined Agassiz, whom he had met in Switzerland, and accompanied him to the Lake Superior region.

While travelling in Switzerland with Lord Cole ( later to be 3rd earl of Enniskillen ) they were introduced to Prof. L Agassiz at Neufchâtel, and determined to make a special study of fossil fish.

Agassiz eventually immigrated to the United States and taught at Harvard University in 1846.

After Agassiz came to the United States he became a prolific writer in what has been later termed the genre of scientific racism.

The cydippid ctenophore Pleurobrachia bachei A. Agassiz, 1860 was named for him ; it was discovered in 1859 by Alexander Agassiz who was working as an engineer on a ship surveying the United States / Canada boundary between Washington State and British Columbia.

Agassiz Township is a township in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, United States.

A return of the ice for some time offered a reprieve, but after retreating north of the Canada – United States border around 10, 000 years ago, Lake Agassiz refilled.

After Louis Agassiz came to the United States he became a prolific writer in what has been later termed the genre of scientific racism.

In 1855 he became professor of geology and palaeontology at the polytechnic school of Zürich, but relinquished this office in 1859, and in 1861 again returned to the United States, when be assisted Louis Agassiz in founding the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

* Agassiz, Cambridge, Massachusetts, a neighborhood in the United States

Humphreys Peak ( latitude 35-20 ' 47 N ) and Agassiz Peak ( latitude 35-19 ' 33 N ) are the two furthest South lying mountain peaks in the contiguous United States which rise to a height of more than 12, 000 feet above sea level.

Polygenism came into mainstream scientific thought in America in the mid 19th century with the work of several corresponding natural scientists such as Samuel George Morton and Charles Pickering as well as Egyptologist George Gliddon, the surgeon Josiah Clark Nott and more prominently the paleontologist and geologist Louis Agassiz in the United States.

Alcott served as a pallbearer along with Louis Agassiz, James Thomas Fields, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and others.

The question having attracted the attention of Agassiz, he not only discussed it with Charpentier and Schimper and made successive journeys to the alpine regions in company with them, but he had a hut constructed upon one of the Aar Glaciers, which for a time he made his home, in order to investigate the structure and movements of the ice.

With the aid of a grant of money from the King of Prussia, Agassiz crossed the Atlantic in the autumn of 1846 with the twin purposes of investigating the natural history and geology of North America and delivering a course of 12 lectures on “ The Plan of Creation as shown in the Animal Kingdom ,” by invitation from J.

In 1873, a private philanthropist ( John Anderson ) gave Agassiz the island of Penikese, in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts ( south of New Bedford ), and presented him with $ 50, 000 to permanently endow it as a practical school of natural science, especially devoted to the study of marine zoology.

A main-belt asteroid named 2267 Agassiz is also named in association with Louis Agassiz.

Agassiz questioned how fish of the same species live in lakes well separated with no joining waterway, Agassiz concluded they were created at both locations.

In 1982, Harvard awarded him with the title of Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology.

Asa Gray promoted and defended Origin against those American naturalists with an idealist approach, notably Louis Agassiz who viewed every species as a distinct fixed unit in the mind of the Creator, classifying as species what others considered merely varieties.

The Swiss palaeontologist Louis Agassiz visited Lyme in 1834 and worked with Anning to obtain and study fish fossils found in the region.

Agassiz was to come to Washington at the government's expense to plan the organization with the others.

In 1841, Louis Agassiz, with several scientific friends, established a temporary station on the Unteraar Glacier, and, along with scientific observations on the glaciers, started a series of expeditions.

Large portions of Ellesmere Island are covered with glaciers and ice, with Manson Icefield and Sydkap in the south ; Prince of Wales Icefield and Agassiz Ice Cap along the central-east side of the island, along with substantial ice cover in Northern Ellesmere Island.

Humboldt supported and worked with other scientists, including Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, Justus von Liebig, Louis Agassiz, Matthew Fontaine Maury and, most notably, Aimé Bonpland, with whom he conducted much of his scientific exploration.