Alexander Agassiz was born on 17 December 1835 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He was the son of the famous naturalist Louis Agassiz. A. Agassiz made a distinguished career as reef scientist, zoologist, mining engineer, and science administrator in the US (Dobbs, 2005). After receiving a degree in engineering and chemistry, he studied biology at Harvard University from 1865 to 1869. Since 1860, Agassiz had been working at the Museum of Comparative Zoology as an assistant and since 1875 as curator. His field was marine invertebrates and he was especially interested in echinoderms, annelids, cnidarians, and coral reefs. Interestingly, starting in 1865, Agassiz made a second career in mining because he had inherited the Calumet Copper Mine in Michigan. Eventually, he became one of the richest Americans and financed his own research expeditions starting in mid-1870ies, which led him to almost every major reef area on earth. Expeditions went to Florida, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cuba, the Yucatán,...
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Gischler, E. (2011). Agassiz, Alexander (1835–1910). In: Hopley, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Modern Coral Reefs. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2639-2_171
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