Redirected from Alexander Agassiz
He was born in Neuchatel[?], Switzerland, and came to the United States with his father in 1846. He graduated at Harvard 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 in 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, being superintendent of the Calumet and Hecla copper mines[?], Lake Superior, from 1866 to 1869, and afterwards, as a stockholder, acquiring a fortune, out of which he gave to Harvard, for the museum of comparative zoology and other purposes, some $500,000.
In 1875 he surveyed Lake Titicaca, Peru, examined the copper mines of Peru and Chile, and made a collection of Peruvian antiquities for the Museum of Comparative Zoology[?], of which he was curator[?] from 1874 to 1885. He assisted Sir Wyville Thomson[?] in the examination and classification of the collections of the Challenger[?] exploring expedition, and wrote the Review of the Echini (2 vols., 1872-1874) in the reports.
Between 1877 and 1880 he took part in the three dredging[?] expeditions of the steamer Blake of the Coast Survey, and presented a full account of them in two volumes (1888).
Of his 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 step-mother) Seaside Studies in Natural History, a work at once exact and stimulating, and in 1871 Marine Animals of Massachusetts Bay.
He served as a president of the National Academy of Science[?].
He died in 1910 onboard the SS Adriatic[?].
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