THE
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY
NOVEMBER, 1910
| ALEXANDER AGASSIZ, 1835-1910 |
By ALFRED GOLDSBOROUGH MAYER
MARINE LABORATORY OF THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION, TORTUGAS, FLA.
ALEXANDER EMMANUEL RODOLPHE AGASSIZ, only son of Louis Agassiz, was born at Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on December 17, 1835.
The great English statistician Galton found that men who attain eminence in science are nearly always sons of remarkable women, and Alexander Agassiz was no exception to this rule. His mother was Cecile Braun, the daughter of the postmaster general of the Grand Duchy of Baden, who was a geologist of note and the possessor of the largest collection of minerals in Germany. Cecile Braun was a woman of culture and an artist of exceptional ability, and she was the first who labored to illustrate the early works of Louis Agassiz, some of the best plates in the "Poissons fossiles" being by her hand. Her brother, Alexander Braun, after whom her son was named, was a distinguished botanist and philosopher, and another brother, Max Braun, was an eminent mining engineer and geologist, and the director of the largest zinc mine in Europe. Thus we find that intellectual superiority was characteristic of both the paternal and maternal ancestors of Alexander Agassiz.
After the birth of her son, sorrow came upon the family, for the heavy expenses demanded by the publication of Louis Agassiz's numerous elaborate monographs with their hundreds of illustrations had exhausted not only their author's means, but had drained the resources of the entire community of Neuchâtel in so far as they could be enlisted for the cause of science. Thus in March, 1846, Louis Agassiz was forced to leave Neuchâtel, and to begin the long journey toward America, where he found a wider field for his great endeavors. Before his wife or children could follow him to his new home, she died in 1848 after a lingering illness.
