A Life Immersed in Feather and Form Louis Agassiz Fuertes, a name synonymous with the golden age of ornithological art, was born on February 7, 1874, in Ithaca, New York. His very namesake—a tribute to the renowned Swiss-American naturalist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz—hinted at the path his life would take: one deeply intertwined with the study and celebration of the natural world. The son of Estevan Antonio Fuertes, a Puerto Rican astronomer and civil engineer who taught at Cornell University, and Mary Stone Perry Fuertes, young Louis grew up in an environment that fostered both intellectua…