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Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin

Head and shoulders portrait of Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin, the President of UW Madison from 1887 to 1892. View the original source document: WHI 2241

b. Mattoon, Illinois, 1843
d. Chicago, Illinois, November, 1948

Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin was a professor, university president, geologist and author. He moved with his family to Beloit in 1846, attended common schools there and graduated from Beloit College in 1866.

Career

After two years as principal of the Delavan high school, he did graduate work at the University of Michigan from 1868 to 1869. He was professor of natural sciences at Whitewater State Normal School from 1870 to 1872, and professor of geology at Beloit from 1873 to 1882. He also served the Wisconsin Geological Survey as assistant state geologist from 1873 to 1876, then as chief geologist from 1877 to 1882. In 1882, he received an honorary Ph.D. from the universities of Wisconsin and Michigan. He became U.S. geologist in charge of glacial studies the same year. He held the post until 1907.

Geology

From 1885 to 1887, Chamberlin was professor of geology at Columbian University in Washington, D.C. He left the position to become president of the University of Wisconsin. During his term as president from 1887 to 1892, the university began offering a Ph.D. degree for the first time. He was also instrumental in establishing the extension services at the university and authorizing the graduate department of economics, political science and history. In 1892, Chamberlin left Wisconsin to become head of the geology department of the newly-formed University of Chicago, a position that he held until retirement in 1919.

Legacy

He accompanied the Peary relief expedition to Greenland in 1894. Chamberlin's major contributions to the expedition were based on his study of glacial phenomena and of geological climates. His planetesimal theory of the earth's origin was developed with the mathematician Forest R. Moulton and published as "The Origin of the Earth" in 1916. He was editor of the 4 volume Geology of Wisconsin from 1877 to 1883. Among his other works are "A General Treatise on Geology" in 1906, written with R. D. Salisbury and "The Two Solar Systems: The Sun's Children" in 1928. He was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Geology from 1893 to 1922 and held numerous honorary and elective offices in various scientific organizations.

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Madison Wis. State Journal, Nov. 16, 1928; R. G. Thwaites, ed., Univ. of Wis. (Madison, (1900); J. W. Stearns, ed., Columbian Hist. of Education in Wis. ([Milwaukee] 1893); Who Was Who in Amer. (1943); Wis. Mag. Hist., 15; Dict. Amer. Biog.