George Ferdinand Becker was an American geologist. He is noted as a leader in mining geology and geophysics, serving for many years as the chief of the Division of Chemical and Physical Research in the United States Geological Survey. He is also regarded for establishing of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Background
He was born in New York City, 5 January 1847. He was the son of Alexander Christian Becker and Sarah Carey Tuckerman Becker of Boston, Massachusetts. The son of Alexander Christian and Sarah Tuckerman Becker, George Becker grew up in a home where serious intellectual endeavor was rewarded. His mother encouraged his early inclination toward science, introducing him to her friends in the Boston and Cambridge academic communities: Asa Gray, Louis Agassiz, Benjamin Peirce, Jeffries Wyman, and Benjamin Gould.
Education
Becker graduated from Harvard University in 1868, studied at, Heidelberg, receiving the Ph.D. degree in chemistry and mathematics in 1869, and, two years later, passed the final examination of the Royal School of Mines in Berlin.
Career
After Becker completed his formal education, he worked in the German Royal Iron Works for a year before returning to the United States. From 1874 to 1879 he was employed at the University of California at Berkeley as an instructor of mining and metallurgy; there he met Clarence King, first director of the United States Geological Survey. Becker joined the Survey and contributed detailed studies of mining districts - the monograph Geology of the Comstock Lode and Washoe District (1882) and the article “Reconnaissance of San Francisco, Eureka and Bodie Districts” (1880) - as well as broader accounts of the Pacific Coast ranges and the Sierra Nevada. In 1880 he was appointed a special agent of the 10th census, and in 1882 was further appointed a special agent in charge of the investigation of the precious-metal industries. In 1896 he examined the gold mines of South Africa and at the time of the Spanish-American War was detailed to serve as a geologist on the staff of General Bell with the army in the Philippine Islands.
Becker’s great concern for mathematical, geophysical, and geochemical approaches to mining geology is evident in his field research. Several of his more general theoretical papers are devoted to geophysical problems, including the structure of the globe: “An Elementary Proof of the Earth’s Rigidity” (1890), “The Finite Elastic Stress-Strain Function” (1893), and “Finite Homogeneous Strain, Flow and Rupture of Rocks” (1893).
Views
Becker maintained that subsidence phenomena followed from the theory that the earth is solid throughout.
Membership
Becker was a member and served as president of the Geological Society of America in 1914.