Editing Louis Agassiz (section)

==Early life==
{{further|Agassiz family}}
Louis Agassiz was born in the village of {{ill|Môtier|fr|Môtier}} (now part of [[Haut-Vully]] which merged into [[Mont-Vully]] in 2016) in the Swiss [[Canton of Fribourg]].<ref name="BDA1906p60">{{harvnb|Johnson|1906|p=60}}</ref> He was the son of a pastor,<ref>Frank Leslie's new family magazine. v. 1 (1857), p. 29</ref> Louis Rudolphe and his wife, Rose Mayor.

His father was a [[Protestant]] clergyman, as had been his progenitors for six generations, and his mother was the daughter of a [[physician]] and an intellectual in her own right, who had assisted her husband in the education of her boys.<ref name="BDA1906p60" /> He was educated at home<ref name="BDA1906p60" /> until he spent four years at secondary school in [[Bienne]], which he entered in 1818 and completed his elementary studies in [[Lausanne]]. Agassiz studied at the Universities of [[University of Zurich|Zürich]], [[Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg|Heidelberg]] and [[Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich|Munich]]. At the last one, he extended his knowledge of [[natural history]], especially of [[botany]]. In 1829, he received the degree of [[doctor of philosophy]] at [[Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg|Erlangen]] and, in 1830, that of [[doctor of medicine]] at Munich.{{sfn|Woodward|1911|p=367}} 
Moving to Paris, he came under the tutelage of [[Alexander von Humboldt]] and later received his financial benevolence.<ref>Andrea Wulf, ''The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2015, p. 250</ref> Humboldt and [[Georges Cuvier]] launched him on his careers of respectively geology and zoology.<ref name="AMB">{{Cite AMB1920|wstitle=Agassiz, Jean Louis Rudolph}}</ref> Ichthyology soon became a focus of Agassiz's life's work.<ref name="AMB" />