Adolph Knopf

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Adolph Knopf (born December 2, 1882 in San Francisco , California , † November 23, 1966 ) was an American geologist and petrologist .

Life

Knopf was the son of German immigrants, his father was a building contractor with a ranch near San Francisco. He studied geology at the University of California, Berkeley , with Andrew Cowper Lawson . In 1905 he earned his master's degree in geological mapping in the Sierra Nevada plutons in the Kern River valley . He then went to the United States Geological Survey , for which he initially prospected deposits in Alaska for five years and then worked in Montana , Nevada and California. From 1920 he taught as an associate professor at Yale University , but continued to work part-time for the USGS until 1945. For example, in 1929 he prepared a report on the Mother Load gold field in California ( The Mother Load system of California , US Geological Survey Professional Paper No. 157). In 1923 he was given a full professorship and in 1937 he became Silliman Professor and in 1938 Sterling Professor . In 1951 he retired and moved to California near the ranch where he grew up. He was visiting professor in California and then consulting professor at Stanford University and was further active in geological field work.

Knopf was an expert in petrology and, in addition to publications on special deposits, in particular with plutons, dealt with field studies, for example on Spanish Peaks in Colorado and the Boulder batholith. He also dealt with questions of isostasis (and geosynclinal theory) and the geological age of the earth, supporting early estimates by Arthur Holmes and others (over 2 billion years old).

In 1944 he was President of the Geological Society of America and in 1959 received the Penrose Medal . He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1931) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1948).

He was married twice, his first marriage from 1908 until his wife's death in 1918. He had three daughters and a son from his first marriage. In 1920 he married again.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter K. (PDF; 670 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved January 29, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Button, Adolph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geologist and petrologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH San Francisco , California
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 1966