Louis Agassiz asserts in 1837 that ice…

Louis Agassiz asserts in 1837 that ice had once covered much of the European continent, based on geological evidence observed by tracking the movements of glaciers. 

His “catastrophic” view of geology opposes the famous “uniformitarian” doctrine of the Scottish geologist Sir Charles Lyell that only uniform and gradual changes occur in the Earth's history.

Agassiz points to geological formations, as well as the scratched surfaces of rocks in certain areas, to support his theory.

The originator of the concept of ice ages, the Swiss-born Agassiz is to become one of the most influential scientists of his century.

A recent graduate in medicine and philosophy of the universities of Erlangen and Munich, he had worked in Paris in 1831 with Georges Cuvier, the founder of the discipline of comparative anatomy.

Having in 1832 become professor of natural history at the College of Neuchatel, Switzerland, he had published the first volume of his five-volume Recherches sur les poissons fossiles (Studies on Fossil Fish) in 1833.

Using the principles of comparative anatomy, Agassiz describes more than seventeen hundred species.