Fossils to Plastics: A Century of Scientific Support

Abstract

WHEN Agassiz admonished his students by saying "Study Nature, not books," a young Rochesterian by the name of Henry A. Ward took him seriously and founded, in 1862, Ward's Natural Science Establishment. Shortly after Darwin's revolutionary Origin of the Species burst on the American intellectual scene, the Agassiz-oriented Ward was there to funnel the riches and oddities of nature into the classrooms, laboratories, and museums for a growing and curious nation.