The Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz dominated American science and intellectual culture from his 1846 arrival in Boston until his death in 1873. From the first he generated a whirlwind of scientific activity. The nascent Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard quickly captured this European star for their new chair in zoology and geology, and from this platform, Agassiz organized the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences; founded and ran the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard; and professionalized the teaching of science in American colleges and universities. His students dominated the natural sciences in America for two generations. The Boston literati seated Agassiz at the head of their exclusive "Saturday Club" table; he counted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Ralph Waldo Emerson among his closest friends. His lectures, campaigns, books, and articles spread his gospel of science into the...