Frederick Leslie Ransome

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Frederick Leslie Ransome (born December 2, 1868 in Greenwich , London , † October 6, 1935 in Pasadena , California ) was an American reservoir geologist and pioneer of engineering geology .

Life

Ransome came to San Francisco with his family in 1870 , where his father Ernest Leslie Ransome pioneered reinforced concrete construction in the United States. He studied geology at the University of California, Berkeley with Joseph LeConte , but especially with Andrew C. Lawson , who came to Berkeley in 1890. He became his assistant with Charles Palache and mapped in the area of ​​San Francisco ( Marine County ). In 1895, Palache and Ransome named the metamorphic mineral lawsonite , which they found during their mapping work in San Francisco Bay, in honor of their teacher. In 1896 he received his doctorate and went to Harvard. In the same year he went to the US Geological Survey in Washington DC, where he was primarily a reservoir geologist. Right at the beginning he investigated the famous Mother Load gold field in California, the actual source of gold in the California gold rush of the 1850s, which began with the discovery of soap gold. From 1904 he investigated the Cripple Creek deposit region in Colorado with Waldemar Lindgren and from 1905 he investigated the lead ore deposits of Coeur d'Alene in Idaho. Many other well-known deposits followed in the USA. From 1912 to 1923 he headed the ore deposits department as the successor to Samuel F. Emmons and Lindgren. In 1922 he became professor of economic geology at the University of Arizona at Tucson. Four years later, in protest at the dismissal of the university president who had fetched him, he went to Caltech in 1927 as professor of economic geology . There he also turned to engineering geology, initially investigating the causes of the failure of the St. Francis Dam of the Los Angeles water supply in 1928 (with 600 deaths), and he was one of the two geologists on the official report on the disaster. The incident made it clear to the public in the USA that engineering geologists need to be involved in major construction projects. He worked extensively for the Bureau of Reclamation and the California Water Board. From 1923 he was, for example, geological advisor for the construction of the Hoover Dam (Ransome died a few days after it opened). From 1928 he was also a consultant for the 241 mile long Colorado River Aqueduct through the Mojave Desert for the water supply of California.

In addition to deposits, he also dealt with faults and published an article in National Geographic in 1906 about the causes of the San Francisco earthquake in the same year.

He was one of the founders of Economic Geology in 1905 and was an associate editor for thirty years. In 1914 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences and in 1927 he was President of the Society of Economic Geologists.

In 1900 he married the geologist Amy Cordova Rock, with whom he had a son and three daughters.

In 1914 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences .

Fonts

  • Description of the Mother Load district (California), US Geological Survey 1900
  • with Waldemar Lindgren, Geology and Gold Deposits of the Cripple Creek district, Colorado, US Geological Survey Professional Paper 54, 1906
  • The direction and movement and the nomenclature of faults, Economic Geology, Volume 1, 1906, pp. 777-787
  • The present standing of applied geology, Economic Geology, Volume 1, 1905, pp. 1-10
  • The tertiary origin of the North American Cordillera and its problems, Silliman Lecture, Yale 1913, in: Problems of American Geology, 1915, pp. 287-376
  • Directions of progress in Economic Geology, Economic Geology, Volume 23, 1930, pp. 119-131
  • High dams, the viewpoint of the geologist, American Soc. Civ. Eng., Transactions, 95, 1931, pp. 149–158 (lecture at the ASCE symposium on high dams in San Diego 1928)
  • Historical Review of Geology as related to western mining, in: Ore Deposits of the Western States (Lindgren volume), American Institute Min. Metal. Closely. 1933, pp. 1-16

literature

  • Edson S. Bastin, Biographical Memoirs National Academy 1941

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ He also published: Ransome, Geology of the St Francis dam site, Economic Geology, Volume 23, 1928, pp. 119-131
  2. ^ Ransome, The probable cause of the San Francisco earthquake, National Geographic, Vol. 17, 1906, pp. 280-296
  3. ↑ election page
personal data
SURNAME Ransome, Frederick Leslie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Greenwich , London
DATE OF DEATH October 6, 1935
Place of death Pasadena , California