Background

Joseph was born at New Providence on December 15, 1869. His father Henry Ferdinand and his mother Elizabeth née Wisner, of Swiss descent, had owned a farm in Warwick, Orange County, New York before moving to a new farm in New Jersey.

Education

Barrell was well prepared for a fruitful and scholarly career in the earth sciences: he studied engineering at Lehigh University, graduating with high honors in 1892, and continued there for Engineer of Mines and Master of Science degrees in 1893 and 1897. He received the Ph.D. in geology from Yale in 1900 and the Doctor of Science from Lehigh in 1916.

Career

While receiving the Ph.D. in geology from Yale in 1900 and the D.Sc. from Lehigh in 1916, in order to defray the expense of such extended education, Barrell took part-time positions teaching mathematics, mining and metallurgy, geology, zoology, and astronomy; he considered this experience invaluable when he became professor of structural geology at Yale (1908-1919).

Barren’s ideas on metamorphism grew out of fieldwork during the summers of 1897-1901.

In 1901 he joined the United States Geological Survey in Montana, to study the Marysville mining district and large Marysville and Boulder granite batholiths. Dissatisfied with contemporary theories of their origin, he directed his efforts to an accurate description of the characteristics of igneous intrusions occurring in nature and developed a theory of magmatic stoping. The method of invasion was by subsidence of roof blocks and the rise of magma. Superheated magma confined, at great depths shows a maximum of marginal assimilation. In the zone of flowage, magmatic intrusions crowd aside their containing wall rock, with the development of peripheral schistosity, and in the zone of fracture they force strata apart, forming sheets, laccoliths, and dikes. Greatly confined magmas expand and give rise to volcanism. Charles Schuchert called the Geology of the Marysville Mining District, Montana (1907) a geological classic.

He early recognized causal relationships between climatic variation and sedimentation, emphasizing that the ratio of terrestrial to littoral and marine deposits fluctuates markedly through time. Barrell proposed that sedimentation is a complex repetition of many compound rhythms and that such cyclic events as diastrophism, erosion, temperature change, and rainfall variation influence and are influenced by topography and physical geography, by the depth and streaming force of water bodies. He outlined numerous covarying factors of deposition in “Criteria for the Recognition of Ancient Delta Deposits” (1912) and pointed out that the heterogeneity of stratified deposits is the result.

Barrell read the history of the earth in its strata and interpreted their irregularities as meaning that geological processes are halting and discontinuous. Anti- uniformitarian arguments are forcefully presented in “Rhythms and the Measurements of Geologic Time” (1917), one of Barrell’s more philosophical works. Here he tried to estimate the age of the earth by calculating the rates of denudation, sedimentation, uplifts and subsidences, deposition of salt in the sea, and emission of radioactivity. The figure he obtained, 1,400 million years to the Precambrian, was more than ten times the usual uniformitarian estimates.

Geodesic theory occupied Barren’s interest for a portion of his career. He published eight papers in the Journal of Geology (1914-1915), under the series title “Strength of the Earth’s Crust,” that present his views on isostasy and terrestrial dynamics. Positing two crustal layers, an outermost and stronger lithosphere (50-70 miles thick and of varying density) and a zone of flowage that he named the aesthenosphere (70-300 miles thick), he sought to explain geological phenomena by their dynamic interaction.

Barrell said that isostatic equilibrium obtains in general, despite the effects of erosion and sedimentation. He wrote that the lithosphere is capable of supporting limited loads, uncompensated, however, if the vertical anomaly is inversely proportional to the area. Anomalies in excess of this proportion are compensated for by vertical displacement of the lithosphere against the foundation aesthenosphere (isostalic adjustment).

Although Barrell’s concerns were seemingly diverse, they were actually variations on a common theme: the effects of physical agents on the evolution of the earth and its inhabitants. “The Origin of the Earth” (1916), a lecture delivered to Yale’s Sigma Xi Society, discussed the conditions required for the genesis of the solar system and the development of the earth. His papers on sedimentology always relate sedimentological processes to the larger problems of historical geology, as do his treatments of structural geology. Barrell even maintained that biological evolution was the result of physical and chemical agents, in that these are the factors determining the environment of organisms.

Achievements

• American geologist Joseph Barrell was a pioneer in integrating tectonics, denudation, and climate for the understanding of sedimentation. He also worked with the United States Geological Survey to study the Elkhorn Mining District of Montana (1899). In 1900 he again worked with the USGS and produced a remarkable study titled "Geology of the Marysville Mining District, Montana: a Study of Igneous Intrusions and Contact Metamorphism." The study of rock metamorphism became a major interest and in 1914 he wrote about the "Relations of Subjacent Igneous Invasions to Regional Metamorphism." Another major advance he made was in the production of marine sediments and his ideas on how to determine ancient shorelines.
  
  Many of Barrell’s 150 published papers deal with topics in paleoclimatology and sedimentology. He greatly influenced the manner in which stratigraphic problems were subsequently approached and conceptualized. Before his work, it was generally held that most sedimentary strata were of marine origin. Barrell was convinced by examination of the floodplains of western deserts and Triassic deposits of New Jersey that at least a fifth of all land surfaces are mantled by continental, fluvial, or eolian sediments.
  
  In recognition of his valuable achievements in the field of geology, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1915.

Works

More photos

• book

  • State of Connecticut, Public Document No. 47; State Geological and Natural History Survey

    (About the Book History texts study and interpret the past...)

  • Geology and Ore Deposits of the Elkhorn Mining District, Jefferson County, Montana 1902
  • The evolution of the earth and its inhabitants; a series delivered before the Yale chapter of the Si
  • The Lithology of Connecticut 1896
  • The Upper Devonian Delta of the Appalachian Geosyncline 1914
  • Geology of the Marysville Mining District, Montana: A Study of Igneous Intrusion and Contact Metamorphism 1907
  • The Lithology of Connecticut. State of Connecticut State Geological and Natural History Survey Bulletin 1910
  • The Strength of the Earths Crust 1910
  • Central Connecticut in the Geologic Past 1896
  • Geological Relations of Earth-Condensation and Resulting Acceleration in Rotation 1925

Views

Although Barrell was concerned with a variety of problems, from mining technology to the evolution of protoman, Barrell’s chief contributions were in isostasy, sedimentology, and metamorphism. He preferred building theories to collecting data, and his most impressive papers were deductive interpretations of the work of others. When writing on a particular topic, Barrell followed what he called the method of multiple working hypotheses: beginning with a set of carefully considered assumptions, he attempted to derive a number of hypothetical explanations that could later be checked against existing facts and theories. His own conclusions were typically prefaced with lengthy and critical presentations.

He examined the theories of Chamberlin–Moulton planetesimal hypothesis and questioned the idea that planetesimals grew by very gradual accretion of dust. Barrell suggested that most of the finer sediment on the surface of the earth or under the ocean had been produced by weathering.

Quotations: “If we ask enough questions about a difficult assignment, we can get the teacher to make it easier and less demanding.”

“The teacher "teaches" and the students "sit and listen" or learn passively.”

“If I memorize enough stuff, I can get a good grade.”

“Thinking" is not something we talk about.”

“Books and teachers are always "right", and we learn only from them, not from any other resource in the room, such as our friends.”

“The answer to most questions can be given in one or two words, and no one will challenge you to go deeper.”

“Most tasks and tests will demand recall of isolated pieces of information, and I will not have to show how concepts and ideas are related or how facts illustrate underlying principles.”

Membership

American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1915).

Connections

Joseph Barrell married Lena Hopper Bailey on December 27, 1902.

Father:

Henry Ferdinand Barrell

Mother:

Elizabeth (Wisner) Barrell

Spouse:

Lena Hopper Bailey

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  1970