James Dwight Dana

James Dwight Dana was an American geologist, mineralogist, volcanologist and zoologist born February 12, 1813, in Utica, New York, who died April 14, 1895, in New Haven, Connecticut, and who graduated from Yale College in 1833 under Benjamin Silliman, served as mineralogist and geologist on the United States Exploring Expedition to the Pacific from 1838 to 1842, and was appointed Silliman Professor of Natural History and Geology at Yale in 1850, a post he held until 1892 while also editing the American Journal of Science and Arts. His research on mountain building, volcanic activity and continental and oceanic structure included early studies of Hawaiian volcanism and its Loa and Kea trends, and he published System of Mineralogy in 1837, Manual of Mineralogy in 1848, Manual of Geology in 1863, Corals and Coral Islands in 1872 and Characteristics of Volcanoes in 1890. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, served as president of the Geological Society of America in 1890, received the Copley Medal in 1877 and the Clarke Medal in 1882, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1874.