In 1826, after two years at Zürich, Louis entered the great German University of Heidelberg, and there his true university life began. The four years that he passed there were among the most important years of his entire life. They were years of hard conscientious study, combined with wholesome recreation. “First at work, and first at play,” was his motto. Here he made friendships that were tense and enduring. Two fellow students, Braun and Schimper, became particularly his intimates, and with Agassiz formed a trio which their fellow students called “the Little Academy.”
It was an ambitious atmosphere, and the friendships which were formed were based on a love of intellectual pleasures. There was also the vivid vital student life beyond the classrooms; there were long excursions on foot in vacation times; there were duels and love-affairs, and there were boisterous evenings thick with tobacco smoke. Agassiz was a powerful gymnast and an expert fencer. There was nothing in the student life that was good in which he did not participate.
Of the many friendships which his open and affectionate nature so easily formed, his friendship with Alexander Braun was deepest and most lasting. Soon he began to visit Braun at his home in Carlsruhe, where he met his friend’s two talented sisters, one of whom was later to become his wife. And it was here, in the spring of 1827, that the friendly Braun family nursed him back to health after a serious attack of typhoid fever.
The earnestness of these young men is perhaps best described by Agassiz himself. “When our lectures are over, we meet in the evening at Braun’s room or mine, with three or four intimate acquaintances, and talk of scientific matters, each one in his turn presenting a subject which is first developed by him and then discussed by all. These exercises are very instructive. As my share, I have begun to give a course of natural history, or rather of pure zoölogy. Braun talks to us of botany; and another of our company, Mahir, teaches us mathematics and physics in his turn; Schimper will be our professor of philosophy. Thus we shall form a little university, instructing one another, and at the same time learning what we teach more thoroughly, because we shall be obliged to demonstrate it.”
From Heidelberg the three companions now transferred their studies to the new University of Munich, where a far more stimulating intellectual life awaited them. Here were some of the most celebrated teachers of the day, and “the city teemed with resources for the student in arts, letters, philosophy, and science.” A fine spirit existed between students and professors, and there was constant opportunity, not only in the classrooms, but beyond their walls, for the earnest young men to draw on the wells of information which their brilliant instructors freely afforded them.
With an allowance of only $250 a year, Agassiz’s life was necessarily simple and severe. But the three companions soon found that their humble rooms had become the meeting-place of the most brilliant men in the University. Students and even professors crowded their simple living quarters, and naturalists of renown came to visit these extraordinary young men. “Someone was always coming or going; the half-dozen chairs were covered with books, piled one upon another—the bed, also, was used as a seat, and as a receptacle for specimens, drawings and papers.” Specimens of various sorts decorated the walls. In Agassiz’s own room were several hundred fish, “shut up in a wooden tub with a cover and in various big glass jars. A live gudgeon with beautiful stripes is wriggling in his wash-bowl, and he has adorned his table with monkeys.”
During their vacations the young men made expeditions to see such museums as were within reach, and to visit any scientific men to whom they could obtain an introduction. All of southern Germany was included in their rambles, and their wanderings carried them even into explorations of extensive tracts of the Alps.
But although Agassiz had come to Munich for the special purpose of taking the degree of doctor of medicine, his studies soon drifted from those of a medical student to the studies of a true naturalist. He had gone to Heidelberg “with a strong taste for natural history; he left Munich devoted heart and soul to science.” Under these circumstances it was only natural that his first degree should be that of doctor of philosophy; but a year later, to fulfill the desires of his parents, he received the degree of doctor of medicine and surgery.
Up to this time Agassiz had paid no particular attention to the study of ichthyology, which was later to become the great occupation of his life; but in 1829 he was unexpectedly given the opportunity to prepare a history of the fresh-water fishes of Brazil, from a collection which had been made by a celebrated scientist who had died before he could prepare the report covering the collection. Agassiz threw himself enthusiastically into the work of describing and figuring these Brazilian fishes, and in 1829 the work was completed and published with the name of the youthful author on the title-page. His life-work was begun.
It was at this time that he wrote to his father: “I wish it may be said of Louis Agassiz that he was the first naturalist of his time, a good citizen, and a good son, beloved by those who know him.”