Background
August Foerste was born on May 7, 1862, in Dayton, Ohio, United States. He was the son of John August and Louise Wilke Foerste.
100 W College St, Granville, OH 43023, United States
Foerste entered Denison University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1887.
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
For graduate work Foerste went to Harvard University, where he studied physical geography under W. M. Davis and petrography under J. E. Wolff, receiving his Master of Arts in 1888 and the Ph.D. in 1890.
educator geologist paleontologist scientist
August Foerste was born on May 7, 1862, in Dayton, Ohio, United States. He was the son of John August and Louise Wilke Foerste.
Foerste attended public schools in Dayton, graduating from the old Central High School in 1880. He then taught for three years in a small country school near Centerville, Ohio, before entering Denison University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1887. For graduate work he went to Harvard University, where he studied physical geography under W. M. Davis and petrography under J. E. Wolff, receiving his Master of Arts in 1888 and the Ph.D. in 1890.
While studying at Harvard University, Foerste also served in the United States Geological Survey as part-time assistant to Nathaniel Shaler and Raphael Pumpelly. His doctoral thesis in petrography led to advanced studies in that subject for the next two years at the University of Heidelberg and the Collège de France. He devoted vacations, as before, to work with the Geological Survey, apparently planning a career in that organization. In 1892, when its appropriation was drastically reduced, he had to seek employment elsewhere. For a year he worked as tutor to Pumpelly’s children.
In 1893 Foerste returned to Dayton to teach science in the Steele High School, where he remained until his retirement in 1932, at the age of seventy. There were many invitations to teach in colleges and universities, but he felt that his position in Dayton, while providing him with a living as well as opportunities for service to burgeoning technological industries, interfered less with his research than would a more prestigious position elsewhere. During vacations he was employed at various times in the state geological surveys of Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky, and by the Geological Survey of Canada. Beginning about 1920, his summers were spent at the United States National Museum, and after retiring he moved to Washington to continue research there as associate in paleontology.
Foerste’s scientific interests were first directed toward flowering plants. Before graduating from high school he had accumulated a herbarium of over a thousand species, all collected within ten miles of Dayton. Attending a lecture by Edward Orton of Ohio State University while still in high school, he first learned the meaning of the word “fossil” and that fossils could be found in the nearby quarries. His interest in paleontology thus awakened, he collected fossils almost daily in the Soldier’s Home quarry. Then, during the three years he taught near Centerville, he found many additional specimens in rocks of the same age in a large quarry in that locality. When he entered college he thus had a remarkably complete collection of fossils from the Silurian formation in the “Clinton group,” which he later named the “Brassfield.” The description of this fauna became the subject of his first papers and started him on his long-continuing specialization in early Paleozoic paleontology and stratigraphy.
At the beginning of Foerste’s sophomore year at Denison, C. L. Herrick joined the faculty there as professor of natural history. Herrick was only four years older than Foerste, and the two spent much time together in geological fieldwork. Herrick shared with Foerste his plans for a new scientific publication, and the first issue of the Bulletin (now Journal) of the Scientific Laboratories of Denison University consists of one paper by Herrick and two by Foerste. In subsequent years about half of Foerste’s scientific papers appeared in that publication, the latest during the month of his death. While he was responding to Herrick’s influence, Foerste also became acquainted with E. O. Ulrich, with whom he had a lifelong friendship and close association. This had much to do with the devotion of his life to paleontology and stratigraphy rather than to petrography, which had attracted him while at Harvard.
Foerste was a member of the Geological Society of America, the Paleontological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Ohio Academy of Science, and the Washington Academy of Science.
Foerste never married.