Henry S. Washington

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Henry Stephens Washington

Henry Stephens Washington (born January 15, 1867 in Newark , New Jersey , † January 7, 1934 in New York City ) was an American geologist , mineralogist , petrologist and archaeologist . He is one of the authors of the CIPW standard .

Life

Henry S. Washington came from a wealthy family who were related in a secondary line to George Washington . He earned a bachelor's degree from Yale College in 1886 and a master's degree there in 1888 . He then traveled to Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa and learned several languages, including German, French and Italian fluently, but also modern Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Turkish. In the winter semesters 1891/92 and 1892/93 he studied with Ferdinand Zirkel and Hermann Credner at the University of Leipzig and in 1893 earned a Ph.D. with his thesis The Volcanoes of the Kula Basin in Lydia. ; the work was published in New York in 1894. He also attended the American School for Classical Studies in Athens , for which he carried out various excavations in Greece, including one with his brother Charles in Phlius (which was not published in the American Journal of Archeology until 1923 ).

Henry S. Washington was married to Martha Rose Beckwith since 1894. In 1895 he returned to Yale, where he - partly in his private laboratory in New Jersey - carried out rock analyzes for Louis V. Pirsson and Edward Salisbury Dana . Together with Pirsson, Joseph Paxson Iddings and Whitman Cross , Washington developed a systematic nomenclature for igneous rock between 1899 and 1902 , which is still used today in petrography as a CIPW standard . In the following years he published numerous studies of rock samples of volcanic origin from the Mediterranean region and prepared with others the establishment of a geophysical laboratory at the Carnegie Institution of Washington .

His wife left him in 1906 and took large parts of his fortune with her. The marriage later divorced and Washington did not remarry. Between 1906 and 1912, Washington ran a mining consultancy in New York - for the first time in his life he had to work for a living. From 1909 to 1914 he served on the Board of Directors of the New Jersey Geological Survey . From 1912 he worked for the geophysical laboratory of the Carnegie Institution, headed by Arthur L. Day , for which he continued to study igneous rocks, but also submarine volcanoes . In addition, he also repeatedly published individual archaeological works.

In 1918 Washington took over the chairmanship of the volcanology department of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). In 1918/19 he was a science attaché at the American embassy in Rome . In 1922 he became Vice President of the Geological Society of America and the Volcanology Department of the International Geophysical Union and in 1924 President of the Mineralogical Society of America . From 1926 to 1929 he was chairman of the AGU.

Washington was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1897, to the National Academy of Sciences in 1921, and to the American Philosophical Society in 1922 . He was also a member of several national and international scientific and geological societies as well as an elected member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and Knight of the Order of the Crown of Italy .

He was a member of the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC , where he was frequent.

Fonts (selection)

  • The superior analyzes of igneous rocks from Roth's Tables, 1869 to 1884 arranged according to the quantitative system of classification (= United States Geological Survey. Professional Paper. 28, ISSN  0096-0446 = United States Geological Survey. Series D: Petrography and Mineralogy. 27 = United States Geological Survey. Series E: Chemistry and Physics. 41). United States Government Printing Office, Washington DC 1904, ( digitized ).
  • The Roman comagmatic region (= Carnegie Institution of Washington. Publication. 57, ISSN  0099-4936 ). Carnegie Institution, Washington DC 1906, ( digitized ).
  • Chemical Analyzes of Igneous Rocks. Published from 1884 to 1913, inclusive. With a critical discussion of the character and use of analyzes (= United States Geological Survey. Professional Paper. 99). United States Government Printing Office, Washington DC 1917, doi : 10.3133 / pp99 , (1201 pages).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Henry Washington. In: nasonline.org. Retrieved March 30, 2018 .
  2. ^ American Philosophical Society - Member History. In: amphilsoc.org. Retrieved March 30, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Washington, Henry S.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Washington, Henry; Washington, Henry Stephens
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geologist and mineralogist
DATE OF BIRTH January 15, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Newark , New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 1934
Place of death New York City