29. Agassiz, Louis(1807-1873)
"Discours prononcé a l’ouverture des séances de la Société Helvétique des sciences naturelles, a Neuchatel le 24 Juillet 1837". In: Actes de la Société Helvétique des Sciences Naturelles, 1837, vol. 22, pp. V-XXXII.

Cover of the issue that contains Louis Agassiz’s “Neuchâtel Discourse,” from Actes de la Société Helvétique des Sciences Naturelles, 1837.

The beginning of Louis Agassiz’s “Neuchâtel Discourse,” from Actes de la Société Helvétique des Sciences Naturelles, 1837.

First use of the term “Ice Age” (Die Eiszeit), in a note by Karl Schimper, from Actes de la Société Helvétique des Sciences Naturelles, 1837.
In 1837, Louis Agassiz gave an address to his local natural history society in Neuchâtel, which has been forever commemorated as the “Neuchâtel Discourse.”
Agassiz had been studying Alpine glaciers for several years, and he had noticed that glaciers leave evidence of their comings and goings, in the form of moraines, parallel scratches, and transported boulders.
He had also noticed that many lower Alpine valleys have moraines and boulders, but no glaciers, indicating that glaciers were more extensive in the past.
But his big leap of reasoning was to argue that the presence of moraines and erratic bounders throughout Europe suggests that at one time the entire continent was covered in glacial ice. This marked the birth of what is often called “the glacial theory.”
Interestingly, the same issue contains a supporting article by Karl Schimper, who gave a memorable label to a prehistoric time dominated by glaciers: Die Eiszeit—the Ice Age.
