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This year marks the bicentenary of the birth of Louis Agassiz, a Swiss whose aim was to be the premier naturalist of his time. His father's assessment of him was that he had ‘a mania for rushing full gallop into the future’. His life was marked by the production of grandiose schemes, many of which he had the drive to complete. In addition to his massive ambition, he had a brilliant intellect, charming manner and boundless energy. These qualities often lead to his schemes coming to fruition, occasionally against tremendous odds, although sometimes with great cost to his health and personal relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the professed harmony of science and religion in early to middle nineteenth-century culture, scientific practice gradually veered away from confirmation of religious assumptions. This trend culminated in the shock of Charles Darwin's theory of species development, which troubled many scientists and religious believers both for its explicit naturalism and for the unprovable probabilism at the heart of its method. Two key players - and antagonists - in the reception of Darwinism in America, Louis Agassiz and Asa Gray, actually agreed in their assessment of the probabilistic quality of Darwinism, but they split over how much uncertainty to wel-come into their science and their religion. Agassiz became intellectually marginalized because he continued to demand certainty, while Gray's acceptance of uncertainty represented a growing trend among intellectuals of science and religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article illustrates the limitations and pitfalls inherent in the use of educational genealogies in science by citing the historical evidence concerning the apprenticeships of several scientists education in the U.S. It featured the Nathaniel Southgate Shaler's story on his apprenticeship with Louis Agassiz, who brought a fish in a tin can and told Shaler to study it for he will question him. Shaler learned not only comparing objects but he also learned in dealing with things with the work on a group of animals. His apprenticeship end with a moral lesson, he learn from nature and not from the books. On the other hand, the usefulness of genealogical models depends on the level of analysis they wish to employ and the amount of qualitative and quantitative detail they are willing to miss.

Profiles geographer Louis Agassiz. Professional background of the geographer; Incorporation of glacial theory by Agassiz; Efforts employed by Agassiz to counter the theory of Origin of species by Charles Darwin.