When Louis Agassiz arrived in the United States in the fall of 1846, he was one of the most famous scientists in the world. “The foreign professor,” as Emerson called him, took New England by storm, convincing even Thoreau, the village eccentric of Concord, to agree to collect specimens for him. A stream of unlucky creatures—fish, turtles, even an unsuspecting fox—would soon wend their way to Agassiz’s Cambridge lab. And however skeptical Thoreau is said to have been of Agassiz, he did once invite him to lecture at the Bangor Lyceum, an offer Agassiz declined (“My only business is …. nature”). How did American intellectuals who fell for Agassiz make sense of his racism? Drawing on recent work, my talk suggests that the distance between the woods of New England and the Amazon rainforest, where Agassiz staged his last scientific coup, isn't as great as one might imagine.

About Prof. Christoph Irmscher

Christoph Irmscher is the author of several books, including The Poetics of Natural History, Longfellow Redux, Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science, and Max Eastman: A Life. Among his editions are John James Audubon's Writings and Drawings (for the Library of America) and Stephen Spender's Poems Written Abroad. His most recent book is Audubon at Sea (with Richard King) for the University of Chicago Press. In addition, he is a regular book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal and a Distinguished Professor of English at Indiana University Bloomington, where he also directs the Wells Scholars Program.

This event is being co-sponsored by the Concord Free Public Library and the CFPL Corporation’s William Munroe Special Collections.