Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 8.3
Agassiz in concrete. The statue toppled from the Zoology Building on the Stanford
University campus during the 1906 earthquake. From the Web site of the Stanford University
Quake '06 Centennial Alliance, http://quake06.stanford.edu. Photograph courtesy of the
Stanford University Archives, Stanford, CA.
nations was movement by water during the biblical fl ood, but Louis Agas-
siz for one, in his
Etudes sur les Glaciers
(1840), showed that the rocks had
been transported on and within valley and continental glaciers and were
left stranded on distant surfaces as the ice melted. Agassiz (1807-73) is an
interesting fi gure in the history of science because as a prominent zoologist,
geologist, and founder of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard
University, he was a vigorous opponent of Darwin and the concept of evolu-
tion (fi g. 8.3). His arguments that glaciers covered vast areas of the world
