Born: 5 December 1822, United States
Died: 27 June 1907
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Actaea
American educator, naturalist and writer Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz co-founded Radcliffe College and served as its first president from 1882 to 1903.
Agassiz was one of seven women managing directors of the Society for the Private Collegiate Instruction for Women (Harvard Annex) in 1879. The annex provided private lessons from Harvard professors to qualified women who intended to attend university in Cambridge. Agassiz was key to the 1894 transformation of this annex into Radcliffe College.
An avid natural history researcher, Agassiz wrote and illustrated natural history texts as well, publishing A First Lesson in Natural History (1859) and editing Geological Sketches (1866). She traveled to Brazil from 1865 to 1866, and was part of the Hassler expedition through the Strait of Magellan, from December 1871 to August 1872. She wrote an account of the expedition for the Atlantic Monthly.
The following is excerpted from A Woman of the Century, edited by Frances E. Willard and Mary A Livermore, published in 1893 by Charles Wells Moulton.
AGASSIZ, Mrs. Elizabeth Cabot, naturalist. She is the daughter of Thomas Graves Cary of Boston, Mass. She was married to Professor Louis Agassiz in 1850. She accompanied her husband on his journey to Brazil in 1865-6 and on the Hassler expedition in 1871-2; of the second she wrote an account for the “Atlantic Monthly,” and was associated with him in many of his studies and writings. She has published “A First Lesson in Natural History” (Boston, 1859) and edited “Geological Sketches” (1866). Her husband died in 1873, and Mrs. Agassiz edited his “Life and Correspondence” in two volumes (Boston, 1885), a very important work. Mrs. Agassiz resides in Cambridge, Mass, and has done much to further the interest of the Harvard “Annex.”