He lent Agassiz his notes—then came very much to regret it as Agassiz increasingly got the credit for what Schimper felt, with some legitimacy, was his theory. Charpentier likewise ended up a bitter enemy of his old friend. Alexander von Humboldt, yet another friend, may have had Agassiz at least partly in mind when he observed that there are three stages in scientific discovery: first, people deny that it is true; then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.

At all events, Agassiz made the field his own. In his quest to understand the dynamics of glaciation, he went everywhere—deep into dangerous crevasses and up to the summits of the craggiest Alpine peaks, often apparently unaware that he and his team were the first to climb them. Nearly everywhere Agassiz encountered an unyielding reluctance to accept his theories. Humboldt urged him to return to his area of real expertise, fossil fish, and give up this mad obsession with ice, but Agassiz was a man possessed by an idea.