This biography of Louis Agassiz, founder of the Agassiz Museum at Harvard University, is a complete realization of a human being whom you wish you might have known. A man who was a scientist with such wide interests in animals and plants, mountains and fossils, that for him there was no line between the quick and the dead; a friendly man who liked people so well that he was impelled to share his wisdom with them and who was, therefore, a great teacher; an explorer not only of space but of time, a man with the egotists and ruthlessness of genius which values what it needs above everything and everybody else; and yet one who gave endlessly and generously of his intense vitality. For him work was no retreat from a world which he could not handle; it was his life for which he had a tremendous capacity of enjoyment

The story of his life is full of swift and vital drama which would be difficult to duplicate in the modern day of specialization. It is also a story which contributes to an understanding of the development of our own country, which welcomed this foreigner born in the obscurity of a Swiss parsonage and educated in Europe and which still counts such rich returns from his citizenship that without Louis Agassiz it would not be exactly the same America it is today.

Older books contain facts about the life and career of Louis Agassiz, but this is the first creative interpretation of the man. In vivid and sensitive prose, Agassiz comes to life as a genius with charm as well as brilliance, following the ascending path his inner drive set him upon with the swift and unperturbed directness which is in itself evidence of his genius. He is more romantic than a figure in a novel, more genuinely exciting than a character in a contemporary success story. Not only does the author capture the dramatic stages of his career, but the vitality of his personality catches fire from her own enthusiasm for genius and its high value to the human race.

From the dust jacket