Alexander Agassiz

Alexander Agassiz (1835 to 1910) was an American scientist and engineer, the son of the naturalist Louis Agassiz and stepson of Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz. Born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, he came to the United States in 1849 to join his father, entered Harvard at fifteen and graduated in 1855, then studied engineering and chemistry and took a Bachelor of Science at the Lawrence Scientific School in 1857. In 1859 he became an assistant in the United States Coast Survey, and he later worked as assistant curator in the museum of natural history that his father founded at Harvard. When a rich copper lode on Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula was developed as the Calumet Mine, he was made treasurer of the Calumet and Hecla companies. Between 1877 and 1880 he took part in three dredging expeditions of the steamer Blake, and he assisted Charles Wyville Thomson in examining and classifying the collections of the 1872 Challenger Expedition.