Geologist, Geographer

Background.

A native of Kentucky, Nathaniel Southgate Shaler was a student of Louis Agassiz at the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University. After graduating in 1862, Shaler served in Kentucky during the Civil Warand returned to Harvard in 1864 as a professor of geology. He later became dean of the Lawrence Scientific School. He also directed the Kentucky Geological Survey from 1873 to 1880, when he joined the U.S. Geological Survey as a part-time geologist, heading its Atlantic Coast Division from 1884 to 1900. One of Shaler's contributions was the correct assertion that the Earth had a fluid substratum beneath its solid surface. Therefore, he said, the topography of the surface is produced in two ways: by a contraction of the Earth's nucleus (producing the continental folds) and a contraction of the outer shell only (producing mountain ranges).

Accepting Evolution.

One of the first American geologists...