SALISBURY, ROLLIN DANIEL

(b. Spring Prairie, Wisconsin, 17 August 1858: d. Chicago, IIIinois, 15 August 1922)

geology, physical geography.

Salisbury is best known for his collaboration with T. C. Chamberlin in the writing of geological textbooks that profoundly influenced the growth of the earth sciences during the first third of the twentieth century. His field studies, especially in Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Greenland, contributed notably to the then new science of glaciology.

Salisbury had come to Chamberlin’s attention as a student at Beloit College, where Chamberlin ws a part-time professor of geology. When he withdrew from that assignment to give full time to other duties. Salisbury was selected to succeed him, becoming professor of geology in 1884, only three years after receiving his bachelor’s degree. His work at Beloit was interrupted for a year (1887–1888) by a trip to Europe, where he studied under Rosenbusch at Heidelberg and traced a previously unidentified belt of glacial moraines from Denmark to Russia. Chamberlin had employed him earlier in the glacial division of the United States Geological Survey, and his first important scientific contribution was their joint paper published in 1885. In 1891, four years after Chamberlin had become president of the University of Wisconsin, Salisbury resigned his post at Beloit to become professor of geology at the larger institution. Only a year later, however, Chamberlin accepted an invitation to organize the department of geology at the new University of Chicago and took Salisbury with him as professor of geographic geology. Both men remained at Chicago for the rest of their lives.

From 1899 until his death in 1922, Salisbury was dean of the Ogden Graduate School of Science at the University of Chicago, devoting much of his time to the manifold duties of that office. In addition, when the burgeoning program in geography was separated from that in geology to form a new department in 1903, he became its head. In 1918. When Chamberlin retired. Salisbury succeeded him as head of the department of geology, leaving the administration of the geography department to others. During his thirty years at the University of Chicago, Salisbury also assumed much of the editorial responsibility for the Journal of Geology, founded at Chicago during his first year there.

Salisbury never married. All his energy and devotion were concentrated on his students, his administrative responsibilities, and his science. He had a reputation for being brusque in speech and gruff in manner, but beneath the mask was a warm and kindly heart.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. original Works. Salisbury’s writings include “Preliminary Paper on the Driftless Area of the Upper Mississippi Valley” in Report of the United States Geological Survey. 6 (1885), 205–322, written with T.C.Chamberlin: “On the relationship of the Pleistocene to the Pre-Pleistocene Formations of Crowley’s Ridge and Adjacent Areas South of the Limit of Glaciation”, in Report of the Arkansas Geological Survey (for 1889), 2 (1891). 224–248: “The Drift of the North German Lowland”, in American Geologist, 9 (1892), 294–318: “Distinct Glacial Epochs and the Criteria for Their Recognition”, in Journal of Geology, 1 (1893), 61–84: “Salient Points Concerning the Glacial Geology of North Greenland”, ibid., 4 (1896), 769–810: The Physical Geography of New jersey, vol, Iv of Final Report of the [New Jersey] State Geologist (Trenton, 1898): “The Geography of the Region About Devil’s Lake and the Dalles of the Wisconsin’, in Bulletin of the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey, no. 5 (1900), 1–151, written with W.W. Atwood: Geology 3 vols. (New York, 1904–1906), written with T. C. Chamberlin: Physiography (New York, 1907; 3rd ed., 1919); Elements of Geography (New York, 1912), written with H. H. Barrows and W. S. Tower; and Introductory Geology (New York, 1914), written with T. C. Chamberlin.

II. secondary Literature. See the memorial by R. T. Chamberlin, in Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, 42 126–138, with bibliography of 95 titles; and T. C. Chamberlin’ obtituary in Journal of Geology30 (1922). 480–481.

Kirtley F. Mather