Alexander Emanuel Agassiz
Alexander Emmanuel Rodolphe Agassiz (17th December, 1835 - 27th March, 1910) Son of Louis Agassiz and stepson of Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz, was an American scientist and engineer. Agassiz was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland and emigrated to the United States with his father in 1849. He graduated from Harvard University in 1855. subsequently studying engineering and chemistry and taking the degree of bachelor of science at the Lawrence scientific school of the same institution in 1857 and 1859 became an assistant in the United States Coast Survey. Thenceforward he became a specialist in marine ichthyology, but devoted much time to the investigation, superintendence and exploitation of mines. E. J. Hulber, a friend of Agassiz brother-in-law, Quincy adams Shaw, had discovered a rich copper lode known as the Calumet conglomerate on the Keweenaw Peninsula Lake Superior in Michigan. He persuaded them to purchase a controlling interest in the mines, which later become known as the calumet and Heda Mining company based in Calumet, Michigan.
He was elected aFellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1862. In 1877 and 1880 he took part in the three dredging expenditions of the steamer blake of the Coast Survey, and presented a full account of them in two volumes (1888). In 1896 Agassiz visited Fiji and Queensland and inspected the Great Barrier Reef, publishing a paper on the subject in 1898. Of Agassiz's other writings on marine zoology, most are contained in the bulletins and memoirs of the museum of comparative zoology; but he published in 1865, with Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, his stepmother, Seaside Studies in Natural History, a work at once exact and stimulating and in 1871 Marine Animals of Massachusetts Bay.
Agassiz served as a president of the National Academy of Sciences, which since 1913 has awarded the Alexander Agassiz Medal in his memory. He died in 1910 on board the RMS Adriatic en route to New York from Southampton.
