Charles Doolittle Walcott

Charles Doolittle Walcott was an American paleontologist born March 31, 1850, in New York Mills, New York, United States, who died February 9, 1927, in Washington, D.C., and who discovered the exceptionally preserved fossils of the Burgess Shale in British Columbia, Canada, in 1909, including some of the oldest known soft-part imprints, and collected more than 65,000 specimens from what became known as the Walcott Quarry between 1910 and 1924, making major contributions to understanding Cambrian strata across North America. He served as the third director of the United States Geological Survey from 1894 to 1907, the fourth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1907 to 1927, the fourth director of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics from 1920 to 1927, and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1923. He won the Bigsby Medal in 1895, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge in 1909, won the inaugural Mary Clark Thompson Medal in 1921, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1918.