Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Shaler, Nathaniel Southgate

SHALER, Nathaniel Southgate, geologist, b. in Newport, Ky., 22 Feb., 1841. He was graduated in 1862 at the Lawrence scientific school of Harvard, where he received private instruction from Louis Agassiz, and then spent two years in Kentucky, during the civil war, serving in the Federal militia as an officer in the artillery and on the staff. In 1864 he was appointed assistant in paleontology in the Museum of comparative zoölogy at Harvard, and in 1865 he was given charge of the instruction in zöology and geology in the Lawrence school, which he continued until 1872. Meanwhile he received the degree of S. D. for higher studies in 1865, and in 1868 was appointed professor of paleontology in Harvard, which chair he held till 1887, when he became professor of geology. Dr. Shaler was appointed director of the Kentucky geological survey in 1873, and devoted a part of each year until 1880 to that work, in connection with which he published reports entitled “Geological Survey of Kentucky” (6 vols., Frankfort, 1876-'82), and “Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Kentucky” (1 vol., Cambridge, 1876). In 1884 he was appointed geologist to the U. S. geological survey in charge of the Atlantic division. He is a member of scientific societies, and has published upward of one hundred memoirs, including frequent popular articles in the “Atlantic Monthly,” “Scribner's Magazine,” and similar periodicals. Dr. Shaler has published “Thoughts on the Nature of Intellectual Property and its Importance to the State” (Boston, 1878); with William M. Davis, “Illustrations of the Earth's Surface; Glaciers” (1881); “A First Book in Geology” (1884); and “Kentucky, a Pioneer Commonwealth” (1885), in the “American Commonwealth Series.”