Charles Upham Shepard

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Charles Upham Shepard

Charles Upham Shepard (born June 29, 1804 in Little Compton , Newport County , Rhode Island , † May 1, 1886 in Charleston , South Carolina ) was an American mineralogist .

Live and act

Charles Upham Shepard was born in 1804 to pastor Moses Shepard and his wife, Deborah Haskins. He began his studies in 1820 at Brown University , but after a year he moved to Amherst College , where he also received his degree in 1824 and worked as a full professor of chemistry and natural history from 1845 until his retirement in 1877. Among his most important discoveries were phosphate deposits of great economic value in South Carolina.

Shepard was an avid collector, especially of minerals, but also of meteorites, fossils, shells and plants. Its extensive collections, which alone comprised 25,000 mineral specimens and which are said to have exceeded the public collections in London, Paris and Vienna in size and value, were housed in Amherst College. However, a major fire in 1881/82 destroyed a large part of the collection. Shepart tried to rebuild the collection after the fire, which he only partially succeeded in until his death in 1886. Shepard's son, Charles Upham Shepard, Jr. (1842–1915), Amherst donated his father's mineral collection and added 170 meteorites.

Shepard described numerous new minerals, including danburite and oxammite . Of the total of 140 published descriptions, however, only about a dozen are considered to be independent minerals, as many were identified in later investigations either as a mineral mixture or as previously known mineral such as, among others, Beresofite or Beresowite as crocoite , ferrocolumbite as tantalite , lederite as titanite and Partschit as a scribe .

Works

  • 1837: Report on the Geological Survey of Connecticut
  • 1856: Treatise on Mineralogy

Honors

Shepard was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge (Massachusetts) (1849), the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg and the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and, from 1862, a corresponding member of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen .

Shepard should also be honored several times with mineral names. A Rose mineral called shepardite turned out to be identical to enstatite in later investigations , another described by Haidinger as Schreibersite and a third described by Brooke as Brucite .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mineral Atlas: Beresofite (of Shepard) and Beresowite (of Shepard)
  2. ↑ Mineral Atlas: Ferrocolumbite (of Shepard)
  3. ↑ Mineral Atlas: Lederite (of Shepard)
  4. ↑ Mineralienatlas: Partschite (of Shepard)
  5. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 225.
  6. ↑ Mineral Atlas: Shepardite (of Rose)
  7. ↑ Mineral Atlas: Shepardite (of Haidinger)
  8. ↑ Mineral Atlas: Shepardite (of Brooke)
personal data
SURNAME Shepard, Charles Upham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mineralogist
DATE OF BIRTH June 29, 1804
PLACE OF BIRTH Little Compton , Rhode Island
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 1886
Place of death Charleston , South Carolina