Charles Abiathar White
Charles Abiathar White (born January 26, 1826 in North Dighton , Massachusetts , † June 29, 1910 in Washington, DC ) was an American doctor, geologist and paleontologist .
Life
In 1838 the family moved to Iowa, where he grew up in the country. In 1847 he visited the East Coast and in 1848 married Charlotte Pilkington, with whom he moved to Burlington, Iowa. He studied medicine, for which he was apprenticed to a resident doctor and then studied at Michigan University and Rush Medical College in Chicago, where he earned his MD. But his main interests were geology and paleontology and he found the attention of New York State Geologist James Hall , whose assistant he was in 1862/63 before he settled as a doctor in Iowa City in 1864 . 1866-1870 he was State Geologist of Iowa during the existence of the first Geological Survey of Iowa and 1867-1873 he was Professor of Natural History at the State University of Iowa and 1873-1875 at Bowdoin College . In 1874 he worked on the paleontology section of the state geological survey west of the 100th meridian (lead by Lieutenant GM Wheeler). From 1875 to 1892 he was with the United States Geological Survey and its predecessor, where he worked first in the Rocky Mountains under John Wesley Powell and then under Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden in the Territories until its dissolution in 1879. As after the death of Fielding Bradford Meek , with whom he was friends, a gap in the paleontology at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC arose, he took over the continuation of its work and was there curator, before he worked again in 1882 at the newly founded US Geological Survey. From 1892 he was back at the National Museum of National History. From 1876 he lived in Washington, DC He traveled extensively abroad and had good international contacts with paleontologists.
In 1887 he wrote a report on Mesozoic fossils in Brazil for the Brazilian National Museum. In 1882 he was the head of a commission on artesian wells in the Great Plains.
He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1869), its General Secretary in 1872 and Vice President in 1888, and President of the Biological Society of Washington in 1883/84. He was also a founding member of the Geological Society of America and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1889) and the Leopoldina ( January 26, 1894 ). In 1866 he received an honorary MA from Iowa College and in 1893 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Iowa State University. In 1889 he became a foreign member of the Geological Society of London and he was a corresponding member of the Geological Reichsanstalt in Vienna.
literature
- William H. Dall: Biographical Memoirs National Academy of Sciences . 1911, PDF (1.19 MB; English).
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | White, Charles Abiathar |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American physician, geologist, and paleontologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 26, 1826 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | North Dighton , Massachusetts |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 29, 1910 |
| Place of death | Washington, DC |