Louis Agassiz was born May 28, 1807 to a Calvinist minister in the Swiss canton of Fribourg, a French-speaking and predominately Catholic canton. His father had hoped he would pursue a clerical career, but Louis had other ideas.
After graduating from the University of Munich in May 1829 with a doctorate in philosophy, he pursued a doctorate in medicine and surgery, graduating in April 1830. He never practised medicine, but immediately pursued an academic career, going to Paris in 1831 to study under the “father of palaeontology”, Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), at the Jardin des Plantes, where Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) – the first theorist of evolution – had recently taught. There he met Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the leading geographer and geologist of the day; who
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Citation: Surette, Leon. "Louis Agassiz". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 October 2018 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=45, accessed 25 April 2024.]
