![]() ![]() ![]() A Swiss immigrant, Agassiz had quickly established himself as the most famous naturalist in America. His father Herbert, a stove manufacturer and inventor, discouraged his son from what he considered frivolous endeavors but William persevered, and in 1850 he reluctantly agreed to allow Stimpson to become a student of Louis Agassiz at Harvard University. You try to see what the ruin meant to whoever inhabited it and, if you are lucky, you see a little backward into time.” Eiseley's words are particularly applicable to the life of the naturalist William Stimpson, who on three occasions suffered the loss of significant scientific collections and manuscripts by fire.īorn to a prosperous family near Boston in 1832, Stimpson quickly became enamored with the sea, collecting marine animals and keeping them alive in aquaria. As the brilliant nature writer Loren Eiseley aptly noted, “A biography is always constructed from ruins, but as any archaeologist will tell you, there is never the means to unearth all the rooms, or follow the buried roads, or dig into every cistern for treasure.
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