Louis Agassiz 1807-1873 In 1842–1846 he issued his Nomenclator Zoologicus, a classified list, with references, of all names employed in zoology for genera and groups. Apistogramma agassizi is named for him, as are: Isocapnia agassizi Ricker, 1943 (a stonefly); Publius agassizi (Kaup, 1871) (a passalid beetle); Xylocrius agassizi (LeConte, 1861) (a longhorn beetle); Exoprosopa agassizi Loew, 1869 (a bee fly); Chelonia agassizii Bocourt, 1868 (Galápagos green turtle); Philodryas agassizii (Jan, 1863) (a South American snake); and the Gopherus agassizii (Cooper, 1863) (the desert tortoise)
"His had been a charmed life, if only from a scientific point of view. Born in the shadow of the Swiss Alps into a family of clergymen, Agassiz defied his family’s wishes that he become a country doctor and trained with the best scientists in Heidelberg, Munich, and Paris. With the likes of Carl Philipp von Martius, Georges Cuvier, and, finally, Alexander von Humboldt as mentors, he produced gorgeously illustrated scientific works, produced on his own printing press, in which glaciers traveled down mountain slopes, carrying huge boulders with them, and spectral fossil fish told tales of the world as it once was. His concept of the Ice Age (or several ice ages) liberally borrowed from ideas first suggested by others but fused them into a theory of elegance and, as far as Agassiz’ own science was concerned, compelling usefulness: Assuming that the world at one or several points in its vast history was covered by large fields of ice helped explain why some species were not around anymore.
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Jean Loius Amiet - 2023 It is with sadness that we learned of the passing of Professor Jean Louis Amiet on June 6th. Having lived almost 30 years in Cameroon, this nature lover began to become interested in killies when, by pure chance, he captured an Aphyosemion obscurum in 1974. Since then, every naturalistic outing has been more and more devoted to our killies. Striving for years to photograph all specimens, he made a great contribution to the improvement of knowledge of Cameroonian wildlife. Following this in 1987 was the famous book "Cameroon's faune - The genre Aphyosemion". |