Israel Cook Russell was an American geologist and geographer. He was the professor of geology at the University of Michigan from 1892.
Background
Israel Cook Russell was born of New England ancestry at Garrattsville, N. Y. , the son of Barnabas and Louisa Sherman (Cook) Russell. He spent the first twelve years of his life near his birthplace and then went with his parents to Plainfield, N. J.
Education
He was educated in the schools of Clinton, N. Y. , the Hasbrook Institute at Jersey City, the University of the City of New York, where he received the degree of B. S. and C. E. in 1872, and the School of Mines at Columbia College.
Career
On completing his university training Russell went as photographer of the United States Transit of Venus Expedition to New Zealand and Kerguelen Island, an experience that opened to him the field of physiography, afterwards the subject of much of his study. In 1878, after two years as assistant professor of geology in the School of Mines at Columbia, he joined the Wheeler survey for geological exploration in New Mexico under the direction of John J. Stevenson, and the following year traveled in Europe.
In 1880 he was appointed to the newly established United States Geological Survey and assigned to the Great Basin division under G. K. Gilbert, later one of the most distinguished of American geologists. After a year as assistant to Gilbert, he was given independent work investigating the Quaternary history of a series of desert basins in northern Nevada and adjacent parts of California and Oregon. His four years' study of these areas saw the light in a massive monograph published by the government under the title Geological History of Lake Lahontan of Northwestern Nevada (1885), which remains a classic of the science.
Transferred in 1885 to the Southern Appalachian province, he labored diligently on the difficult problem of the structure of an area of much-metamorphosed rocks. In 1888 he began an extensive correlation of the Triassic formation of the United States, an undertaking which, being interrupted, resulted in the publication of a correlation of the Atlantic provinces only, "Correlation Papers: The Newark System, " in the United States Geological Survey Bulletin No. 85 (1892).
In 1889 he began a series of expeditions to Alaska. On the first of these, made for the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, he studied the northern section of the eastern boundary; and during two succeeding summers, under the joint auspices of the United States Geological Survey and the National Geographic Society, he explored the glaciers and the slopes of Mount Saint Elias, making two attempts, the second of which very nearly succeeded, to conquer the summit of the mountain.
When in 1892 he became professor of geology at the University of Michigan, he continued to devote his summer vacations to exploration, mainly in the northwestern United States and in northern Michigan. In addition to numerous technical reports he wrote five popular volumes described as "Reading Lessons for Students of Geography and Geology. " The first of these, Lakes of North America, appeared in 1895; later came Glaciers (1897), Volcanoes (1897), and Rivers of North America (1898), and finally a general geographic study entitled North America (1904).
He served as vice-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Section E), as president of the Michigan Academy of Science, and as president of the Geological Society of America. He died of pneumonia in Ann Arbor, Michigan.