Everything about Edward Hitchcock totally explained
Edward Hitchcock (
24 May 1793 –
27 February 1864) was a noted American
geologist and the third President of
Amherst College (
1845–
1854).
Born to poor parents, he attended newly-founded
Deerfield Academy and in
1821 was ordained as a
Congregationalist pastor. A few years later he left the ministry to become Professor of
Chemistry and
Natural History at Amherst College. He held that post from
1825 to 1845, serving as Professor of
Natural Theology and
Geology from 1845 to his death in 1864. In 1845 Hitchcock became President of the College, a post he held until 1854. As president, Hitchcock was responsible for Amherst's recovery from severe financial difficulties. He is also credited with developing the college's scientific resources and establishing its reputation for scientific teaching.
In addition to his positions at Amherst, Hitchcock was a well-known early geologist. He ran the first geological survey of
Massachusetts, and in
1830 was appointed state geologist of Massachusetts (he held the post until
1844). He also played a role in the geological surveys of
New York and
Vermont. His chief project, however, was natural theology, which attempted to unify and reconcile science and religion, focusing on geology. His major work in this area was
The Religion of Geology and its Connected Sciences
(
Boston,
1851). In this book, he found somewhat tortured ways to make the
Bible agree with the latest geological theories. For example, he knew that the earth was at least hundreds of thousands of years old, vastly older than the 6,000 years posited by Biblical scholars. Hitchcock actually found a way to read the original
Hebrew so that a single letter in
Genesis—a "v", meaning "afterwards"—implied the vast timespans during which the earth was formed.
Hitchcock left his mark in
paleontology. He published papers on
fossilized
tracks in the
Connecticut Valley, including
Eubrontes and
Otozoum, that were later associated with
dinosaurs, though he believed, with a certain prescience, that they were made by gigantic ancient birds. In the
Hitchcock Ichnological Cabinet he established a remarkable collection of fossil footmarks. His son, Edward "Doc" Hitchcock, named one of the earliest dinosaurs discovered in America,
Megadactylus polyzelus. Later it was
reclassified as the
type specimen of
Anchisaurus polyzelus (ACM 41109), a
prosauropod.
His collections, a bust and portrait can be viewed at the
Amherst College Museum of Natural History.
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