Grove Karl Gilbert

Grove Karl Gilbert

Grove Karl Gilbert (* 6. May 1843 in Rochester , New York ; † 1. May 1918 in Jackson , Michigan ), in the scientific literature, especially by the acronym GK Gilbert , was an US -American geologist .

Live and act

Gilbert graduated from the University of Rochester . In 1871 he became the first geologist to join George M. Wheeler's team , which carried out a geographic exploration of the western United States . He then became the first assistant to John Wesley Powell in 1874 in his exploration of the Rocky Mountains and stayed there until 1879. During this time he published an important work on the geology of the Henry Mountains ( The Geology of the Henry Mountains , 1877). After establishing the United States Geological Survey(USGS) in 1879 he was appointed chief geologist, later also managing director, and remained with the USGS until his death. In 1883 Gilbert was elected to the National Academy of Sciences . He was a founding member of the National Geographic Society on January 13, 1888 .

In 1890 Gilbert published a study of Lake Bonneville , which existed in Utah in the Pleistocene and the rest of which is the Great Salt Lake . He named the lake after the army officer Benjamin LE de Bonneville (1796–1878), who had explored this region before him.

In 1891, in one of the most controversial theories of his career, he explained the Barringer Crater in Arizona as the result of a maar explosion and rejected the explanation by the impact of a meteorite . Gilbert based his conclusion that the volume of ejected material with that of the meteorite would together be larger than that of the ejected material around its edge, and that the meteoric an anomaly of the geomagnetic field should call hither. Gilbert's research and calculations concluded that the volume of material ejected was roughly equal to that of the crater and that there was no magnetic anomaly. He saw the meteorite fragments that were occasionally found at the edge of the crater as a coincidence. Gilbert published his conclusions in a series of lectures in 1895. However, later research showed that the crater was in fact formed by the impact of a meteorite. This episode in Gilbert's life is not without a certain irony, as he was one of the first scientists to reject the volcanic formation of the lunar craters and attributed them to meteorite impacts, and later undertook experiments on crater formation by meteorite impacts.

In 1892 and 1909 he was President of the Geological Society of America . From 1907 he was a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

In 1893 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1902 to the American Philosophical Society . In 1899 he joined the Harriman-Alaska Expedition , which traveled along the coast of Alaska for two months and in which, among others, William Trelease , Theodore Pergande , Edward Curtis and Robert Ridgway took part.

Gilbert was one of the most influential early American geologists, a geoscientific pioneer, and is considered one of the "giants" of geomorphology . He contributed to the understanding of landscape development, gained important knowledge about erosion , the cutting of rivers into their subsoil and the process of sedimentation .

In 1900 he received the Wollaston Medal from the Geological Society of America . The Mars crater Gilbert is named after him and the lunar crater Gilbert after him and the doctor William Gilbert . In his honor the GK Gilbert Award of the Geological Society of America for work in planetary geology and the GK Gilbert Award for Excellence in Geomorphic Research are presented . Since 2010 there has also been a GK Gilbert Award from the American Geophysical Union .

literature

• Ellis Yochelson (Ed.) The Scientific Ideas of GK Gilbert , Geol. Soc. At the. Spec. Papers 183, 1980

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wallace Stegner: Beyond the Hundredth Meridian. John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. University of Nebraska, Lincoln 1992
2. ↑ Online at Archive
3. ↑ The Science: What is the Barringer Meteorite Crater? ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Barringer Crater Company  
4. ^ World Book at NASA: Moon.
5. ^ Ronald Greeley: Planetary Landscapes. Allen & Unwin, Boston, 1985
6. ^ Member History: Grove Karl Gilbert. American Philosophical Society, accessed August 19, 2018 . 
7. ↑ Gilbert Award, AGU ( Memento of the original from August 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Web links

• James S. Aber: History of Geology - Grove Karl Gilbert.
• Grove Karl Gilbert, American geologist. Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Gilbert, Encyclopedia of Earth
• Entry for Gilbert, Grove Karl (1843-1918) in the Archives of the Royal Society , London