Grove Karl Gilbert

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Grove Karl Gilbert (May 6, 1843 – May 1, 1918), known by the abbreviated name G. K. Gilbert in academic literature, was an American geologist.

Biography

Gilbert was born in Rochester, New York, the youngest of three kids of the painter Grove Sheldon Gilbert, and his wife, Eliza.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> He graduated from the University of Rochester. During the American Civil War, he was twice listed for the draft, but his name was drawn neither time.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In 1871, he joined George M. Wheeler's geographical survey as its first geologist.

Rockies geologist

Headward erosion of a gully; photo by G.K. Gilbert

Gilbert joined the Powell Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region in 1874, becoming Powell's primary assistant, and stayed with the survey until 1879.<ref>Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, University of Nebraska:Lincoln</ref> During this time he published an important monograph, The Geology of the Henry Mountains (1877). After the U.S. Geological Survey was created in 1879, he was appointed to the position of Senior Geologist and worked for the USGS until his death (including a term as acting director).

Gilbert published a study of the former ancient Lake Bonneville in 1890 (the lake existed during the Pleistocene), of which the Great Salt Lake is a remnant. He named it after the army captain Benjamin Bonneville, who had explored the region. The type of river delta that Gilbert described at this location has since become known to geomorphologists as a Gilbert delta.<ref name=chidsey>"Geological and Petrophysical Characterization of the Ferron Sandstone for 3-D Simulation of a Fluvial-deltaic Reservoir". By Thomas C. Chidsey, Thomas C. Chidsey, Jr (ed), Utah Geological Survey, 2002. Template:ISBN. pp. 2–17. Partial text on Google Books.</ref>

Meteor crater

In 1891, Gilbert examined the origins of a crater in Arizona, now known as Meteor Crater but then as Coon Butte. For several reasons, and against his intuition, he concluded it was the result of a volcanic steam explosion rather than an impact of a meteorite. Gilbert based his conclusion on the beliefs that the volume of an impact crater including the meteorite should be more than the ejected material on the rim and that, if it was a meteorite, iron should create magnetic anomalies. Gilbert's calculations showed that the crater's volume and the debris on the rim were roughly equal, and that there were no magnetic anomalies. He argued that the meteorite fragments found on the rim were just "coincidence". In 1892, Gilbert delivered his paper "The Moon's Face; A Study of the Origin of Its Features" as his retiring President's lecture to the Philosophical Society of Washington, and it was published in the Society's bulletin.<ref name = "Gilbert">Template:Cite journal</ref> He publicized these conclusions in a series of lectures in 1895.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Later investigations revealed that it was in fact a meteor crater, but that interpretation was not well established until the mid-20th century. As part of his interest in crater origins, Gilbert also studied the moon's craters and concluded they were caused by impact events rather than volcanoes, although he wondered why the craters were round and not oval as expected for an oblique impact. The interpretation of lunar craters as of impact origin was also debated until the mid-20th century.<ref name=DRO-GS2002>Template:Cite book</ref>

Geomorphology

Gilbert's 1893 drawing of sculpture around Mare Imbrium
Derailed train after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; photo by G.K. Gilbert

Gilbert joined the Harriman Alaska Expedition in 1899. Two weeks after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, he took a series of photographs documenting the damage along the San Andreas fault from Inverness to Bolinas.

Gilbert is considered one of the giants of the subdiscipline of geomorphology, having contributed to the understanding of landscape evolution, erosion, river incision, and sedimentation. He was a planetary science pioneer, correctly identifying lunar craters as caused by impacts, and carrying out early impact-cratering experiments.<ref>Ronald Greeley, Planetary Landscapes, 1985, Boston, Allen & Unwin</ref> He coined the term sculpture for a pattern of radial ridges surrounding Mare Imbrium on the moon, and correctly interpreted them in 1892 as ejecta from a giant impact.<ref name = "Gilbert" />Template:Rp Gilbert was one of the more influential early American geologists.

Awards

He won the Wollaston Medal from the Geological Society of London in 1900.<ref>Template:Cite newspaper The Times</ref> He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1902.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was awarded the Charles P. Daly Medal by the American Geographical Society in 1910.<ref name="amergeog">Template:Cite web</ref> Gilbert was well-esteemed by all American geologists during his lifetime, and he is the only geologist to ever be elected twice as President of the Geological Society of America (1892 and 1909).<ref>Eckel, Edwin, 1982, GSA Memoir 155, The Geological Society of America — Life History of a Learned Society, Template:ISBN.</ref> Because of Gilbert's prescient insights into planetary geology, the Geological Society of America created the G.K. Gilbert Award for planetary geology in 1983. Gilbert's wide-ranging scientific ideas were so profound that the Geological Society of America published GSA Special Paper 183 on his research (Yochelson, E.L., editor, 1980, The Scientific Ideas of G.K. Gilbert, fourteen separate biographical chapters, 148 pages). Gilbert also served as the president of the American Society of Naturalists from 1885 to 1886.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Craters on the moon and on Mars are named in his honor, as is Mount Gilbert in Alaska, a second Mount Gilbert in California, and Gilbert Peak in the Uinta Mountains of Utah.

Publications

See also

References

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Secondary sources

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