William John McGee

William John McGee ( born April 17, 1853 at Dubuque County, Iowa, † September 4, 1912 ) was an American inventor, geologist, anthropologist and ethnologist.

Life

In his youth, McGee worked on a farm and in a blacksmith, then as a land surveyor. Self-taught, he acquired a thorough knowledge of Latin and higher mathematics. In the early 1870s he moved to Farley, near Dubuque. There he invented some mechanical devices, in particular improvements to agricultural equipment, which he patented. During this time he also turned his attention to geology and archeology.

From 1877 to 1881 he led in an area of ​​over 44,000 square kilometers in the north-eastern Iowa by a topographical and geological mapping, served mainly the study of the loess deposits in the valley of the Mississippi. These were the largest land survey ever carried out at his own cost by an amateur. In addition, he examined the large quaternary lakes in Nevada and California, as well as a rejection took place recently on the sea slope of the central Atlantic. In 1881 he was accepted as a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

From 1883 to 1893 he was responsible for the activities of the USGS in the Atlantic coastal plain. In this function he put together many geological maps and resulted in an area of ​​about 777,000 km ² own field work through. In numerous publications he established several new bases in glaciology and the general geology, and in 1887, he represented the USGS at the International Geological Congress in Berlin. A year earlier he had examined the effects of the earthquake of Charleston.

From 1893 to 1903 McGee led the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington and explored the Seri Indians on Shark Island in the Gulf of California.

In addition, McGee was a visiting professor of anthropology at the State University of Iowa, acting chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science ( 1897-98 ), Chairman of the Anthropological Society of Washington ( 1897-99 ), Vice-President ( 1998-99 ) and President ( 1904-05 ) of the National Geographic Society, the first chairman of the American Anthropological Association ( 1902-12 ) and vice president of Ordicalogical Institute of America. He founded the Columbia Historical Society, and was the first editor of the Geological Society of America. As anthropologist McGee dealt with the beginnings of agriculture, the domestication of pets, marriage, and much more.

At the Universal Exhibition of 1904 in St. Louis McGee led the anthropological section.

Works

• The Pleistocene History of Northeastern Iowa, 1889.
• The Geology of the Chesapeake Bay, 1888.
• The Siouan Indians, 1895.
• Primitive trephining, 1897.
• The Seri Indians, 1899.
• Primitive Numbers, 1901.
• Soil Erosion, 1911.
• Wells and Subsoil Water, 1913.