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Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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FERDINAND VANDEVEER HAYDEN (1829-1887), American geologist, was born at Westfield, Massachusetts, on the 7th of September 1829. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1850 and from the Albany Medical College in 1853, where he attracted the notice of Professor James Hall, state geologist of New York, through whose influence he was induced to join in an exploration of Nebraska. In 1856 he was engaged under the United States government, and commenced a series of investigations of the Western Territories, one result of which was his Geological Report of the Exploration of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers in 1859-1860 (1869). During the Civil War he was actively employed as an army surgeon. In 1867 he was appointed geologist-in-charge of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, and from his twelve years of labour there resulted a most valuable series of volumes in all branches of natural history and economic science; and he issued in 1877 his Geological and Geographical Atlas of Colorado. Upon the reorganization and establishment of the United States Geological Survey in 1879 he acted for seven years as one of the geologists. He died at Philadelphia on the 22nd of December 1887.

His other publications were: Sun Pictures of Rocky Mountain Scenery (1870); The Yellowstone National Park, illustrated by chromolithographic reproductions of water-colour sketches by Thomas Moran (1876); The Great West: its Attractions and Resources (1880). With F. B. Meek, he wrote ( Smithsonian Institution Contributions, v. 14, Art. 4) "Palaeontology of the Upper Missouri, Pt. I, Invertebrate." His valuable notes on Indian dialects are in The Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (1862), in The American Journal of Science (1862) and in The Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (1869). With A. R. C. Selwyn he wrote North America (1883) for Stanford's Compendium.