Louis Agassiz the Scientific Legacy

Louis Agassiz

The Scientific Legacy of Louis Agassiz

Though he may not be as well-known in the general populace as his contemporaries Darwin and Spencer, Louis Agassiz is responsible for some of the greatest achievements in geology, marine biology, paleontology and scientific philosophy in the 19th century. His wide-ranging interests, deep intellect, and talent for acute observation and innovative thinking allowed him to become one of the most important natural historians of his day. His scientific legacy lives on today, not only through his discoveries and theories, but also in his approach to scientific study and education, especially in the field of marine biology.

Though he is considered an integral part of the American scientific tradition, Louis Agassiz was actually born in Switzerland in 1807. During Agassiz's education in Switzerland and Germany, he was exposed to many of the primary thinkers and attitudes of the German Romantic movement, including Goethe, Oken, and Dollinger (Berkeley). The naturalists that were involved in the German Romantic movement approached nature with a mix of scientific inquiry and metaphysical reverence. Geology was of particular importance to these thinkers, as well as to other natural philosophers in Europe and in America. The study of the geological record was crucial to arguments for and against the emerging theory of evolution, and Agassiz absorbed these arguments in ways that would affect his professional career profoundly later in his life.

Early in his life, Agassiz developed a passion for marine life in general, and fish in particular. When he was a child, he and his brother turned the stone reservoir of the spring behind his house into an observation tank full of fish that they gathered from nearby lakes and streams (Duffin, 2007). During his formal education, Agassiz was disturbed by the lack of scholarly work in ichthyology, and so devoted himself to pursuing that scholarly work himself. He embarked on a thorough survey of the freshwater fish in Europe, amassing an exhaustive collection of specimens. Eager to put his new knowledge to use in a broader context, Agassiz sought out the famed French naturalist Georges Cuvier, who had achieved great respect for his work in comparative anatomy and the study of fossils. Agassiz helped Cuvier collect, study, and record fish fossils, and his deep knowledge of ichthyology proved immensely helpful in categorizing the collection. Cuvier was so impressed that he handed his notebooks over to Agassiz shortly before his death, in essence choosing Agassiz as the heir of his scientific legacy (Ibid.).

Agassiz not only inherited a body of work from Cuvier -- he also inherited a scientific philosophy that would inform his methods and conclusions for the rest of his life. Cuvier was a catastrophist; in other words, he attributed the gaps in the geological record to major natural catastrophes destroying species and allowing for new creations (Ibid.). This put him, and Agassiz who followed him, in direct conflict with evolutionary theorists who contended that the difference between modern species and those of the fossil record could be explained by a seamless progression of small changes. Agassiz carried this attitude for the rest of his life, maintaining it even in the face of the major scientific and cultural shift that occurred after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species.

After Cuvier's death, Agassiz embarked on following another passion: teaching. He returned to Switzerland, inaugurating the professorship of natural history at the University of Neuchatel (Ibid.). His classes were well-attended and respected, and he offered public lectures and children's classes to the community. Agassiz's teaching did not stop him from continuing his intensive research on fish fossils, which he collected and published in the massive Recherche sur Les Poissons Fossiles, released in volumes between 1833 and 1844. The work remains to this day the definitive work on fossil fish (Ibid.).

In addition to his work in ichthyology and paleontology, Agassiz became an accomplished geologist, and spent many years studying the glaciers, mountains, valleys, and rock formations of Europe. During his observations, Agassiz noticed that the telltale marks that glaciers leave in rock formations could be seen in areas where there was no historical record of glaciers. In 1840, he concluded that all of Europe had once been "buried under a vast mantle of ice, covering alike plains, lakes, seas, and plateaus" (qtd. In Levin, 2010). This hypothesis of a great "ice age" was one of his most important contributions to geology, and completely revolutionized the 19th century concept of the natural history of the planet.

Agassiz continued to find evidence for his ice age hypothesis when he traveled to North America in 1846. He was welcomed warmly in America, and was soon put in charge of building the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, where he also assumed a professorship (Duffin, 2007). The museum opened in 1860, and had the distinction of being the first publicly funded museum of science in North America (Berkeley). Agassiz worked tirelessly to promote scientific education in the United States. In 1863, he was a founding member of the new National Academy of Sciences, and in the same year was appointed a regent of the Smithsonian Institution (Ibid.).

In 1873, just a few months before his death, Agassiz founded the first American marine biology laboratory on the island of Penikese in Massachusetts. The primary goal of the laboratory was two-fold: to be a venue for new research, and, more importantly to Agassiz, to teach methods of observation in natural history to secondary school teachers, ensuring the further dissemination and proliferation of this relatively young field (Benson, 1988). Agassiz endowed the project with his own passion and his own education philosophy, stenciling the door of the main laboratory with his own motto: "Study nature, not books" (Ibid.).

His sudden death doomed the project, which lasted only one year before closing. However, Agassiz's lab at Penikese is largely considered the "spiritual father" of the famous Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, which is now the premier marine laboratory in North America (Zirkle, 1946). The Penikese laboratory was the first institution in the Americas founded for the sole purpose of study marine biology in its natural habitat (Benson, 1988). In this sense, Agassiz can be considered the father not only of the natural history approach to marine biology, but also of marine biology education in the United States.

When he died in 1874, Agassiz was widely respected as a scientist, writer, and educator, and he continues to be to this day. However, there was one blemish in his legacy that has stymied his full acceptance into popular culture in the United States. Agassiz's whole-hearted commitment to the theory of special creation made him a lead dissenter in the debates about evolution in the mid and late 19th century. His theories had profound implications for racial theory and politics. Because he did not believe in the shared source of all species, Agassiz maintained that blacks and whites had been created separately, and were in fact separate species. Though Agassiz deplored the state of slaves in the United States, his reasoning was immediately adopted and referenced by the leaders of the pro-slavery argument in the South (Duffin, 2007). Despite rising popular opinion and scientific evidence against Agassiz's conclusion, he maintained his beliefs on the matter until his death.