Background
Lawson, Andrew Cowper was born on July 25, 1861 in Anstruther, Scotland. Son of William and Jessie (Kerr) Lawson.
Lawson, Andrew Cowper was born on July 25, 1861 in Anstruther, Scotland. Son of William and Jessie (Kerr) Lawson.
Bachelor of Arts, University of Toronto, 1883, Master of Arts, 1885. Doctor of Philisophy, Johns Hopkins, 1888. Doctor of Science, University of Toronto, 1923.
Doctor of Laws, University of California, 1935.
Doctor of Science, Harvard, 1936.
He was the editor and co-author of the 1908 report on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake which became known as the "Lawson Report". He was also the first person to identify and name the San Andreas Fault in 1895, and after the 1906 quake, the first to delineate the entire length of the San Andreas Fault which previously had been noted only in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also named the Franciscan Complex.
Lawson was born on July 25, 1861 in Anstruther, Scotland.
In 1883, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in natural science from the University of Toronto. He worked for the Geological Survey of Canada while pursuing his graduate degrees.
He received his Master of Arts from the University of Toronto in 1885, and his Doctor of Philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in 1888. In 1890, he left the Geological Survey of Canada to work as a consulting geologist in Vancouver.
In October of the same year, he accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Mineralogy and Geology at the University of California in Berkeley.
He became a full professor in 1892, and a Professor Emeritus from 1928 to his death on June 16, 1952. Professor Lawson was a consulting geologist for the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s. His home in the Louisiana Loma Park area of the Berkeley Hills in Berkeley, California, now called the "Lawson House", was especially designed for him by noted architect Bernard Maybeck to withstand earthquakes.
The house is an officially designated local landmark.
The mineral Lawsonite is named for him, as is the Lawson Adit, originally a mining construction research tunnel on University of California Berkeley"s campus. During the Cold War, it was used to house special equipment to monitor Soviet nuclear tests.
lieutenant"s currently used to house seismological instruments.
Fellow Geological Society America (president 1926. Member National Academy Sciences, American Philosophical Society. Member American Association Petrol.
Geologists, Sierra.
Married Ludovika von Jantsch, November 30, 1889 (died December 25, 1929). Married second Isabel R. Collins, January 5, 1931. Children: Andrew Werner, William Eric, Ludovico (deceased), James Albert (deceased).