The New International Encyclopædia/Whitney, Josiah Dwight

WHITNEY, Josiah Dwight (1819-96). An American geologist, born at Northampton, Mass., the brother of Professor William D. Whitney. He was educated at Yale College, and in 1840 was employed on the New Hampshire geological survey. After serving in similar surveys of Ohio, the Lake Superior region, Iowa, and Wisconsin, he became State geologist of California, occupying this office from 1860 to 1874. In 1865 he was called to the chair of geology at Harvard University. Through his travels and studies in the principal mining regions of the United States, Whitney became the foremost authority of his day on economic geology, and he was able to perform a great service in the development of the mineral resources of the country. The best known of his writings are: The Mineral Wealth of the United States (1854); A Report on the Upper Mississippi Land Region (1862); The Geological Survey of California (1864-70); The Yosemite Guide-Book (1869); with J. W. Foster, Report on the Geology of the Lake Superior Land District (1851-52); and with James Hall, Geological Report on Ohio (1858).