Arthur Keith was an American geologist. He served for the Massachusetts Topographical Survey and the United States Geological Survey.
Background
Arthur Keith was born on September 30, 1864 in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, one of two sons of Massachusetts parents, Harrison Alonzo Keith, a schoolteacher, and Mary Elizabeth (Richardson) Keith. His father was descended from the Reverend James Keith, who settled in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, in 1662 as its first pastor; his mother's earliest American ancestor was Thomas Richardson, who came to Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1630. Both parents had graduated from Antioch College in Ohio in 1859. A few years after Arthur's birth, the family moved to Quincy, Massachusetts, the birthplace of his father, who for many years was principal of the Quincy high school and afterward mayor.
Education
Arthur Keith attended Quincy public schools and prepared for college at Adams Academy. Thereafter he entered Harvard, where he excelled in athletics. In later life he attributed his remarkable physical endurance as a field geologist to this early training in outdoor sports. Keith graduated from Harvard with the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1885 and on the advice of Professor Nathaniel Southgate Shaler decided to make geology his career. He studied for a year at Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School, receiving the Master of Arts degree in 1886, and spent another year in the Harvard "Graduate Department. "
Career
In 1886 Keith worked in the Boston area for the Massachusetts Topographical Survey. In June 1887 he joined the United States Geological Survey. His first duty was with a field mapping party in the Appalachian area of Tennessee as assistant to the geologist Bailey Willis. That fall he moved to the Survey's headquarters in Washington, D. C. , where he helped prepare the map in final form from the field notes. From 1888 to 1895 he was in charge of his own field party as assistant geologist; in 1895 he was promoted to the rank of geologist.
Over the next two decades, alternating summer surveying trips with winter preparation of reports, Keith concentrated on the geological structure of the Appalachian Mountain chain. In 1906 Keith was placed in charge of the Geological Survey's mapping program for the entire United States. When in 1912 the work was subdivided into two parts, east and west of the 100th meridian, he continued to direct the eastern section. In 1921 he gave up this administrative work and returned to full-time research, now chiefly on the central and northern parts of the Appalachian Mountain system.
After officially retiring in 1934, at the age of seventy, he continued to work in the field and extended his study of the Appalachians by expeditions to New England and into the Canadian province of Quebec. Keith's quadrangle reports, maps, and short articles contained an immense amount of stratigraphic and structural data, the results of his field work. His primary interest was factual rather than theoretical, but from his field observations he did evolve a general theory on the origin of the Appalachians which he first advanced, with characteristic modesty, in his "Outlines of Appalachian Structure". Keith proposed that batholithic intrusions had furnished the heat and force required to form the mountain belt. The force of these intrusions, he reasoned, caused pressure from the Atlantic floor against the margin of the continent, resulting in deformation of the geosynclinal sediments to the west. One section of the paper was headed "Suboceanic spread"; nearly fifty years later, sea-floor spreading was a topic of current discussion in geological circles. In his presidential address to the Geological Society of America in 1927, Keith expanded his theory and applied it to the entire North American continent.
On several occasions Keith was called upon to assist in matters of public policy. During World War I he made a report on features of possible military importance along the northern boundary of New England, and in 1933, for the Tennessee Valley Authority, he examined the site of Norris Dam. During the years 1928-1931 he was chairman of the Division of Geology and Geography of the National Research Council. His theories, which he published only reluctantly, were based on the knowledge available at the time; it remains for history either to bear them out or to disprove them. Keith made his home in Washington, D. C. , with his mother until her death.
Achievements
Religion
Keith was a Unitarian in religion.
Membership
Keith had an active part in the official work of scientific organizations. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1928 and served as its treasurer from 1932 to 1940.
Personality
Keith set high standards for himself and expected the best from those who worked under him, yet at the same time was generous in his help.
Interests
Keith was interested in sailing and designed yachts.
Connections
Keith married, on June 29, 1916, Elizabeth Marye Smith of Athens, Ohio, a graduate of the Washington College of Law, who usually accompanied him on field trips. They had no children.