James Dwight Dana

His zoological author abbreviation is Dana.[1]

Early life and career

Dana was born February 12, 1813, in Utica, New York.^[2] His father was merchant James Dana (1780–1860) and his mother was Harriet Dwight (1792–1870). Through his mother he was related to the Dwight New England family of missionaries and educators including uncle Harrison Gray Otis Dwight and first cousin Henry Otis Dwight.^[3] He showed an early interest in science, which had been fostered by Fay Edgerton, a teacher in the Utica high school, and in 1830 he entered Yale College in order to study under Benjamin Silliman the elder.^[4]

Graduating in 1833,

In 1844 he again became a resident of New Haven, and married Professor Silliman's daughter, Henrietta Frances Silliman. In 1850, he was appointed as Silliman's successor, as Silliman Professor of Natural History and Geology in Yale College, a position which he held until 1892. In 1846 he became joint editor, and during the later years of his life was chief editor, of the American Journal of Science and Arts, to which he was a constant contributor, principally of articles on geology and mineralogy.^[4]

The 1849 publication of his geology of

He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1854.^[7]

Dana was responsible for developing much of the early knowledge on

Following another expedition by fellow geologist

Dana was a beloved teacher of geology. According to Oliver C. Farrington, To SIT at the feet of Professor Dana and drink from the overflowing fountains of his knowledge, was a privilege which once enjoyed could never be forgotten. Some examples of his teaching style were given by Oliver C. Farrington^[8]

The quality in an investigator which, other things being equal, he seemed to esteem most highly, was that of carefulness. How often were his students advised to trust or to doubt the statements of an author according as he was or was not, in the opinion of Professor Dana a careful man. With hasty and ill-considered conclusions or elaborate theories built from meager observations he had no patience, but to opinions which he believed had been derived from a careful and thorough study of facts, he was ever ready to give the fullest consideration, however much they might be opposed to his previous conclusions. "More," he said, "could be learned by studying unconformities than conformities," and this he believed to be as true of unconformable opinions as of heterogeneous strata.

Professor Dana's first teacher was an ardent student of nature who was wont to go with his pupils on long tramps for the purpose of collecting minerals, plants and insects, and aroused in them much of his own eagerness for the pursuit of knowledge. It is therefore but just that some of the fame of his distinguished pupil should be attributed to him. One incident which Professor Dana used to relate to illustrate his teacher's fervor as a collector was that when on one occasion his little party had gathered at a remote place more mineral specimens than they could carry in their hands, the master, in preference to leaving any behind, improvised a bag from a pair of trousers and thus bore them safely to their destination.

Dana died on April 14, 1895.^[2]

Family

Dana was married to Henrietta Silliman in 1844.^[9]

Their son, Edward Salisbury Dana (1849–1935), was also a distinguished mineralogist.

Publications

Dana's best known books were his

• System of Mineralogy (1837)^[10]
• Manual of Mineralogy (1848),
  Wilkes Expedition, appeared from 1846 onwards. Other works included Manual of Mineralogy (1848), afterwards entitled Manual of Mineralogy and Lithology (ed. 4, 1887); and Corals and Coral Islands (1872; revised ed. 1890).^[13] In 1887, Dana revisited the Hawaiian Islands, and the results of his further investigations were published in a quarto volume entitled Characteristics of Volcanoes (1890).^[14]

The Manual of Mineralogy by J. D. Dana became a standard college text, and has been continuously revised and updated by a succession of editors including W. E. Ford (13th-14th eds., 1912–1929), Cornelius S. Hurlbut (15th-21st eds., 1941–1999), and beginning with the 22nd by Cornelis Klein. The 23rd edition is now in print under the title Manual of Mineral Science (Manual of Mineralogy) (2007), revised by Cornelis Klein and Barbara Dutrow.

Dana's System of Mineralogy has also been revised, the 6th edition (1892)^[15] being edited by his son Edward Salisbury Dana. A 7th edition was published in 1944, and the 8th edition was published in 1997 under the title Dana's New Mineralogy, edited by R. V. Gaines et al.

Between 1856 and 1857, Dana published a number of manuscripts in an effort to reconcile scientific findings with the Bible. Among these, he wrote Science and the Bible: A Review of "The Six Days of Creation" of Prof. Tayler Lewis (1856),^[16] and Creation, Or, The Biblical Cosmogony in the Light of Modern Science (1885).

Scholia has a profile for James Dwight Dana (Q315366).

Awards and recognition

Dana was awarded the Copley Medal by the Royal Society in 1877, the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London in 1874 and the Clarke Medal by the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1882. Dana was president of the Geological Society of America in 1890.^[17]

Named in honor of Dana

• Dana Park in Albany, New York, with a fountain/monument in his honor
• Sierra Nevada
  , California, US
• Dorsa Dana (a wrinkle-ridge system) on the Moon
• Danalite, a mineral.
• Dana Passage in Puget Sound, US^[18]
• Dana, a crater on Mars^[19]
• The Dana Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America was named for Dana and his son Edward Salisbury Dana. It recognizes outstanding scientific contributions through research in the mineralogical sciences by an individual in the midst of their career.
• The James Dwight Dana House in New Haven, Connecticut was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.
• The fossil horseshoe crab Euproops danae
• Dana Peak in Alaska.^[20]

See also

• Howlite
• European and American voyages of scientific exploration
• Dana's System of Mineralogy
• Category:Taxa named by James Dwight Dana
• Dana Classification System

References

Additional sources

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Dana, James Dwight". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 793.
• American Mineralogist, Vol. 21 (1936), 173–177.
• *The Life of James Dwight Dana: Scientific Explorer, Mineralogist, Geologist, Zoologist, Professor in Yale University, Daniel Coit Gilman, Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York, 1899
• Artikel James Dwight Dana in der Encyclopædia Britannica von 1911. Gemeinfrei.
• David R. Oldroyd (1996): Thinking about the Earth, Harvard Press,
  ISBN 0-674-88382-9
  ; dt.: Die Biographie der Erde. Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Geologie, Frankfurt a.M., 1998.
• Johannes Uray, Chemische Theorie und mineralogische Klassifikationssysteme von der chemischen Revolution bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. In: Berhard Hubmann, Elmar Schübl, Johannes Seidl (eds.), Die Anfänge geologischer Forschung in Österreich. Beiträge zur Tagung „10 Jahre Arbeitsgruppe Geschichte der Erdwissenschaften Österreichs“ von 24. bis 26. April 2009 in Graz. Graz 2010, S 107–125.
• Stanton, William (1970–1980). "Dana, James Dwight".
  ISBN 978-0-684-10114-9
  .

External links

Wikisource has original works by or about:
James Dwight Dana

Wikimedia Commons has media related to James Dwight Dana.

Wikiquote has quotations related to James Dwight Dana.

• "Dana, James Dwight" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900.
• Pirsson, Louis V. (1919). "Biographical Memoir of James Dwight Dana (1813-1895)" (PDF). Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences.

Awards and achievements
Preceded by Frederick McCoy	Clarke Medal 1882	Succeeded by Ferdinand von Mueller