Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science

by Edward Lurie

Overview

A giant of nineteenth-century natural history study, Louis Agassiz made major contributions to modern knowledge of geology, paleontology, and zoology. Agassiz's fame in America was largely as a popularizer of natural history and teacher of advanced students. Founding the Museum of Comparative Zoology at harvard was his lasting teching and research achievement, and the Smithsonian Institution and National Academy of Sciences benefited from his impulse to professionalize science. A life-long opponent of the theory of evolution. Agassiz affirmed the magnificence of God's plan to all who would "study nature, not books."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801837432
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	10/01/1988
Pages:	504
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Edward Lurie is professor of history, science, and culture at the University of Delaware and senior research fellow at the Hagley Museum and Library. He is the author of Nature and the American Mind and The Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College.

Table of Contents

1. The Formative Years 1807-1827
2. The Making of a Naturalist 1827-1832
3. From Switzerland to Boston 1832-1846
4. The American Welcome 1846-1850
5. Naturalist to America 1850-1857
6. Building a Museum 1857-1861
7. Agassiz, Darwin, and Transmutation 1859-1861
8. The Trials of a Public Man 1861-1866
9. The Past and the present 1866-1873
Epilogue to the New Edition 1988
Notes
Essay on Sources
Rcent Sources
Index

What People are Saying About This

Stephen Jay Gould

By far the best work on this central figure in the history of American biology.

From the Publisher

By far the best work on this central figure in the history of American biology.
—Stephen Jay Gould