The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
In 1847 he became professor of zoology at the University of Giessen, and in 1852 professor of geology and afterwards also of zoology at the University of Geneva. His earlier publications were on zoology. He dealt with the Amphibia (1839), Reptiles (1840), with Mollusca and Crustacea (1845) and more generally with the invertebrate fauna of the Mediterranean (1854). In 1842, during his time with Louis Agassiz, he discovered the mechanism of apoptosis, the programmed cell death, while studying the development of the tadpole of the midwife toad ("Alytes obstetricans"). Charles Darwin mentions Vogt's support for the theory of evolution in the introduction to his "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex" (1871).