James Dwight Dana

The field of geology is studded by a lot of notable names that anyone would recognize in a heartbeat. One great name though that isn’t heard of very often is that of James Dwight Dana’s. During his time, he made massive contributions to the field of geology, mineralogy, volcanology, and zoology. He was one of the people who pioneered the study of mountain-building, the origin and structures of all the continents and oceans, and volcanic activity. Indeed, he was a man that proved to be relentless in his desire to understand the earth and he was one of the reasons why the modern world knows so much about the earth and how it came to be. Indeed, he was a man that did wonderful work and one name that deserves to be remembered and lauded.

Early life

James Dwight Dana was born in Utica, NY, way back on February 12, 1813. His parents were Harriet Dwight and James Dana who worked as a merchant. Through his mother’s side of the family, he was related to the Dwight Family of New England who were missionaries and educators. Some of his relatives included Henry Otis Dwight and Harrison Gray Otis Dwight. James Dwight showed an interest in science at a very young age and this interest was fostered by one of his teachers in Utica high school. The teacher was fay Edgerton and she had a big role towards making sure that young James developed his interest in science. In the year 1830, he graduated high school and enrolled in in Yale College where he got the chance to study under the elder Benjamin Silliman. He graduated from Yale College three years after in the 1833 and spent the next two years of his life working as a teacher to midshipmen in the navy to whom to taught math to. He got the chance to sail to the Mediterranean while he was teaching.

His career

In the years 1836 and 1837, James Dwight Dana took on a job as assistant to Benjamin Silliman who was a professor at Yale and headed the chemical department. Four years after his assistant post, he moved on to become a mineralogist and a geologist for the US Exploring Expedition which was headed by Capt. Charles Wilkins. The expedition took him all the way to the Pacific Ocean where he found enough material to keep him occupied for the next 13 years of his life. The expedition ended in 1942 and he had notebooks filled with sketches, maps, diagrams, and views of Castle Craggs and well as Mount Shasta. In the year 1849, his sketch of Mounts Shasta was engraved and published in the American Journal of Science an Arts- a publication spearheaded by Silliman in the early 1800s. The publication also published a rather lengthy article based on Dana’s geological notes from 1841. The article talked about rocks, minerals, and the geology of the Shasta region using scientific terms. The year 1844 was an exciting year for James Dwight Dana because not only did he become a resident of New Haven but it was also the year he got married to Henrietta Frances Silliman- she was the daughter of Benjamin Silliman.

In the year 1850, he was given a big honor and was appointed as the successor to his father-in-law and became a Silliman Professor of Natural History and Geology in Yale. Dana held on to this teaching spot until 1892. But teaching wasn’t all he did during those years because in 1846, he joined the American Journal of Science and Arts and took on the role as joint editor. During the later years of his life though, he moved on to become chief editor but he was also a contributor and published works on the subject of geology and mineralogy.

Notable works

It has to be said that he managed to accomplish a lot but he had a couple of contributions that really stood out. For instance, his 1849 publication of Mount Shasta was in response to the gold rush in California. After all, he was the pre-eminent geologist in the US during his life and he really was just one of the very few observers who had knowledge of the terrain in northern CA. Dana was the guy who wrote that given the geography and geology of the area, it was very likely that gold could be found in northern CA.

James Dwight Dana was also responsible for giving the world information about the volcanic landscape and activity in Hawaii. It was in the years 1880 and 1881 that he went on the first geological study of volcanoes in Hawaii and he was the same guy who theorized that the chain of volcanoes in the area consisted of two strands known as the “loa” and the “kea” strands. That wasn’t his first and last visit though because in 1890, he went with C.E. Dutton, a fellow geologist, and again published a manuscript about the island that was the most detailed study anyone had ever seen at that time. For decades, his manuscript was the definitive source for Hawaii’s volcanoes.

Publications

Dana was a prolific writer but some of his best works are his System of Mineralogy (1837), Manual of Geology (1863), and his manual of Mineralogy (1848). He also had a very interesting manuscripts published which were entitled Science and the Bible which he wrote in an effort to reconcile science with some biblical texts. Not only did his works get a lot of attention and used in schools but he also received a lot of awards like the Copley Medal in 1877 from the Royal Society, the Wollaston medal in 1874 from the Geological Society of London, and the Clarke medal in 1882 from the Royal Society of New South Wales.

The final journey

James Dwight Dana died on April 14, 1895. He had a son named Edward Salisbury Dana who was also a well-known and brilliant mineralogist during the years 1849-1935.

James Hutton

James Hutton is also known as the father of modern geology. Apart from being one of the most prominent figures in this field of science, he is also a noted physician, naturalist, chemical manufacturer, and an experimental agriculturalist. One of his most salient contributions to science was his uniformitarianism which happens to be one of the fundamental principles that geology has. Not only did he make great observations concerning the world that surrounded him, he was able to come up with reasoned and valid geological arguments.

Early Life and Educational Background

He was one of five children of the merchant named William Hutton who was also at that time the city treasurer of Edinburgh. His father, however, died when he was still young and it was their mother Sarah Balfour who had taken care of him and his siblings.

His mother had insisted that James should attend the High School of Edinburgh and James had shown a particular interest for chemistry and mathematics. When he turned 14 though, he studied as a “student of humanity” at the University of Edinburgh. He then became a lawyer’s apprentice, but upon the advice of his employer for him to have a more congenial career, James Hutton began to pursue his interest in medicine as it was nearest to chemistry which was his favorite pursuit back then.

For three years, he studied in Edinburgh and was able to complete his medical education in the University of Paris. In the year 1974, he finished his degree as a Doctor of Medicine at Leiden where his thesis had been on blood circulation. During that time, however, it wasn’t exactly the boom of the medical profession and seeing there was little opportunity for him, James Hutton left his career as a doctor and pursued agricultural endeavors.

Careers

He had inherited a small property which had been in their family since 1713 when his father passed away. He used this piece of land in Berwickshire for his agricultural pursuits. It was after his not so fruitful practice of medicine that he moved back to their farm in the Slighhouses and he began making some improvements when he settled there in 1750. He had experimented with both plant as well as animal husbandry, and noted his innovations and ideas in a work called The Elements of Agriculture. One of his more famous accomplishments in agriculture involved his development of a red dye he was able to make from the madder plant’s roots.

His exposure to agriculture was what had led him to develop a love for geology for which he is famous for. The process of clearing and then draining the farm had given him enough opportunities to observe rocks and their formation. The farm became a stable place and later on he was able to build a house where he and his three sisters lived in Edinburgh.

James Hutton and Geology

Back in the day, geology in the proper meaning of the word was practically nonexistent, but there was quite a progress in mineralogy. Ideas conceived by James Hutton were unheard of and were not easily entertained by those who were then the experts in mineralogy. He had desired to trace the origins of different rocks and minerals which would then lead to a better understanding of the earth’s history.

He pursued his research for years, and it was in the spring of 1785 when he had expressed his views to the Royal Society of Edinburgh—only recently established then through his work called Theory of the Earth, or an Investigation of the Laws Observable in the Composition, Dissolution and Restoration of Land upon the Globe. His work had been remarkable and he had expressed how this study was not at all like cosmogony.

According to Hutton, geology is a study which is confined to the materials found on the earth and that all around there may be evidence proving that the rocks which are now visible on the earth’s surface may have been part of greater, older rocks which have previously been in the bottom of the sea—that there is a cycle of rock formation and that pressure, heat, and other factors contribute to the presence of these materials on the earth’s surface.

He searched for evidence to prove his theories, and discovered how granite was able to penetrate metamorphic schists—which was indicative or granite’s being molten at one point. He had also discovered a similar event of penetration of volcanic rocks through sedimentary rocks. James Hutton had even travelled with John Playfair to find more geological samples proving the origin of rocks and minerals by examining the unconformities and rock formations they came across.

From the observations and research that Hutton had noted, he reasoned how there must have already been innumerable cycles which each involved the deposition of materials onto the seabed, uplift of these same materials through tilting and erosion, and formation of different layers under the sea. The thicknesses of the layers had implied to him the stretches of time in between the formation of these rocks.

Other Interests

It was not only geology that had captured the attention of Hutton, but he also had an interest for meteorology and the earth’s atmosphere. Apart from his publication called “Theory of the Earth” he also had one entitled “Theory of the Rain” where he had investigated about the climate as well as rainfall in different parts of the world which led him to conclude that rainfall is regulated by humidity as well as air currents.

He had also believed that the earth is a superorganism, but this idea of his was overshadowed by the reductionism in the 19^th century. Apart from those beliefs, he also advocated the uniformitarianism for living organisms.

Much of the contributions of Hutton received less attention than it should have when he was still alive, but five years after his death, John Playfair published a great summary of Hutton’s works in Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, and a biography of the father of geology was also published by Playfair in the fifth volume of Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.