Ebenezer Emmons
Ebenezer Emmons ( born May 16, 1799 in Middlefield, Massachusetts, † October 1, 1863 in Brunswick County, North Carolina) was an American geologist. He named the Adirondack Mountains and was a pioneer of geological mapping and stratigraphy in the U.S., starting from the state of New York, which served as a model for other states in the U.S..
Life
Emmons graduated from Williams College with a degree in 1818 and at the Berkshire Medical School and practiced for a while as a doctor in Chester. His interest in geology - he assisted his teacher Chester Dewey (1784-1867) in 1824 at a geological map - leaving him to study with Amos Eaton continue with the completion in 1826 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the same year, his textbook on geology and mineralogy appeared. . In 1828 he returned as Professor of Chemistry to the Williams College. He was there in 1830 a junior professorship (next to Eaton ), a position he held ten years until 1839. Since its founding in 1836, he was connected with the Geological Survey of New York ( as state geologist of the northern district ). They wanted to map out in Massachusetts the state geological and explore along the lines of Edward Hitchcock. Also involved are the geologists Vanuxem Lardner (1792-1848), Timothy Conrad (1803-1877) and William M. Mather (1804-1859), and shortly afterwards James Hall after Conrad State paleontologist was.
He is the founder of the stratigraphy of the Palaeozoic in New York State. He established with his colleagues at the Geological Survey of New York (especially Vanuxem and Hall ), the New York system (also New York Transition System) for Paleozoic rocks (ages before the Carboniferous). He also led in 1840 a the Taconic system for the Paleozoic rocks of the fold zone of the Taconic orogeny.
Emmons was involved in a heated argument with his student James Hall on the age of the strata of the Taconic system. He held her for Cambrian (which was later confirmed ), Hall thought she was ordovizisch. The dispute went to court. Emmons was defeated and was excluded from the Geological Survey. He went in 1851 to North Carolina to conduct the geological land survey there.
In 1838 he named the Adirondacks and 1844, the Taconic Mountains ( part of the Appalachian Mountains on the eastern edge of New York on the border with Connecticut and Massachusetts). He was co-founder of the American Association of Geologists, which was founded in 1838 at his home in Albany.
A thrust fault line running through Vermont and New York southward extends from Newfoundland to Pennsylvania, bringing layers of the lower Cambrian in contact with the middle Ordovician, is named after him ( Emmons Line, formerly Logan 's Line in honor of William Edmond Logan ). It runs even in the middle of the campus of the Rensselar Polytechnic Institute.
Emmons and Hall are buried side by side in Albany (Albany Rural Cemetery ). The Mount Emmons in the Adirondacks is named after him. In 1837 he ascended the highest mountain in the state of New York, Mount Marcy, the first in recorded history.