Leo Lesquereux Autobiography 1864-1886

  1. Resources
  2. View Resource

ArchivalResource

Leo Lesquereux Autobiography 1864-1886

http://www.amphilsoc.org/mole/view?docId=ead/Mss.B.L567-ead.xml

Leo Lesquereux emigrated from his native Switzerland to Ohio in 1848, and quickly established himself as one of America's foremost bryologists and paleobotanists. Working with the state geological surveys of Pennsylvania and several states in the Mississippi Valley, he contributed some of the earliest descriptions of the Carboniferous flora in North America and helped flesh out the basic geology of coal formation. The autobiography of Leo Lesquereux provides an engaging account of the early life of one of Victorian America's best known bryologists and paleobotanists. Consisting of 14 letters addressed to his friend, J. Peter Lesley, the letters cover only the years between Lesquereux's childhood in Switzerland and his emigration to the United States in 1848. Written after his retirement at the age of 78, they shed light on his education, the illness that led to his loss of hearing, and his studies of peat deposits in Europe, and they provide short vignettes about watchmaking and about his peers Louis and August Agassiz and Arnold Guyot.

0.25 Linear feet

American Philosophical Society

Information

SNAC Resource ID: 6631658

Related Entities

There are 6 Entities related to this resource.

Lesley, J. Peter, 1819-1903

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w66n3z1d (person)

When J. Peter Lesley (1819-1903) graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1838, he intended for the Presbyterian ministry, but when ill health intervened, he was set off on a path that would make him one of the most influential geologists in 19th century Pennsylvania. In order to help rebuild his strength and restore his health, Lesley accepted an appointment with the first Pennsylvania Geological Survey under the direction of Henry Darwin Rogers and engaged in structural a...

Agassiz, Louis, 1807-1873

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w68h99sx (person)

Swiss-American zoologist and geologist. Professor of zoology and geology at Harvard University. Louis Agassiz was born in Môtier-en-Vuly, Switzerland. He studied at the universities of Zürich, Erlangen (Ph.D., 1829), Heidelberg, and Munich (M.D., 1830). Agassiz studied medicine briefly but turned to zoology, with a special interest in fishes and fossils, while studying under the French naturalist Cuvier. In 1832 he became professor of natural history at the University of Neuchâtel, Sw...

Elliott and Armstead

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6vc0wtw (person)

Guyot, A. (Arnold), 1807-1884

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6b56m28 (person)

Arnold Henry Guyot was a geographer and the first to formulate laws of structure and movement of glaciers. He published geography textbooks, 1866-1875, and was professor of physical geography and geology at Princeton University, 1854-1884. From the description of Correspondence, 1857-1882. (American Philosophical Society Library). WorldCat record id: 122316399 Geographer and geologist. From the description of Letter of A. Guyot, circa 1857. (Unknown). WorldCat re...

Lesquereux, Léo, 1806-1889

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6pz5bms (person)

Louis Agassiz (1807-1873, APS 1843) was a zoologist and geologist. A student of Georges Cuvier, Agassiz was renown for his six-volume work Poissons fossils, a study of more than 1,700 ancient fish. Equally important was his Ètudes sur les glaciers (1840). In 1845 Agassiz moved to the United States on a two-year study grant from King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia to compare the flora and fauna of the United States and Europe. While in the United States he was invited to deliver a c...

Clarke's Union Photographic Gallery

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6206rzc (person)