Edward Orton Sr.

Edward Francis Baxter Orton (1829 to 1899) was a United States geologist and minister and the first president of Ohio State University. Born at Deposit in Delaware County, New York, he graduated from Hamilton College in 1848, studied at theological seminaries and at Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School, and was ordained in 1856. He taught natural science at the New York State Normal School at Albany and then at Antioch College, where he became president in 1872. In 1873 he became president of what was then the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College, where he was also professor of geology; he resigned the presidency in 1881 but remained professor of geology until his death. He founded the university's first academic department, the Department of Geology, and the Orton Geological Museum. Ohio's state geologist from 1882, he was an economic geologist who specialised in oil and gas and developed the anticlinal theory.