Louis Agassiz's photographs in Brazil: Separate creations

Abstract

When the Swiss-born naturalist Louis Agassiz arrived at Harvard in 1846, he was embraced by a country with growing scientific interests.1 Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807–1873), was the disciple of Baron Georges Cuvier, the prominent zoologist who, like Agassiz, supported the idea of the inunutability of the species. In 1846, Agassiz was elected as Professor of Zoology and Geography at Harvard, where he remained until his death in 1873. Owing to his ability to locate support from wealthy admirers of his work, he founded the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, MA in 1857 and, in 1868, he helped establish Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Agassiz's optimism for the progress and future of science brought him many admirers, and ‘kings and commoners alike were somehow uplifted from participating in the realization of an Agassiz dream’.2 However, while his vision of bringing the marvels of natural history to a wide audience kept Agassiz in the public eye, his ambitious nature and his devout creationist beliefs eventually caused him to be viewed in a controversial light by his colleagues. He found acclaim as the originator of the Ice Age theory, as well as criticism for his use of science to support notions of racial inequalities. As he was, and still is today, considered an influential figure in the history of science, a substantial amount of documentation concerning his life and work has been preserved.

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