Encouraged by his parents, Lindgren entered the Royal Mining Academy at Freiberg, Saxony, at the age of eighteen, to study under an illustrious faculty, including the brilliant Alfred W. Stelzner. Here he was graduated as a mining engineer in 1882 and spent the next year in graduate work.
Encouraged by his parents, Lindgren entered the Royal Mining Academy at Freiberg, Saxony, at the age of eighteen, to study under an illustrious faculty, including the brilliant Alfred W. Stelzner. Here he was graduated as a mining engineer in 1882 and spent the next year in graduate work.
Connections
colleague: Raphael Pumpelly
Raphael Pumpelly, an American geologist and explorer.
(Mining historian Kerby Jackson introduces us to a classic...)
Mining historian Kerby Jackson introduces us to a classic mining work in this important re-issue of the Us Department of Interior publication “Gold Belt of the Blue Mountains of Oregon”. Originally published in 1901, this important publication on Oregon Mining has not been available for over a century. Included in this volume are rare insights into the gold deposits of the Blue Mountains of North East Oregon, including the history of their early discovery and early production. Extensive details are offered on this important mining area's mineralogy and economic geology, as well as insights into nearby gold placers, silver deposits and copper deposits.
The Tertiary Gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California
(Mining historian Kerby Jackson introduces us to a classic...)
Mining historian Kerby Jackson introduces us to a classic mining work by Waldemar Lindgren in this important re-issue of The Tertiary Gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California. Unavailable since 1911, this publication includes details on the gold-bearing ancient river channels of the famous Sierra Nevada region of California.
The Mining Districts of the Idaho Basin and the Boise Ridge, Idaho
(The Mining Districts of the Idaho Basin, and the Boise Ri...)
The Mining Districts of the Idaho Basin, and the Boise Ridge, Idaho covers a large area in which many mines are located. A lot of placers occurred in this area due to erosion from the mountains surrounding the basin which carried large deposits. Some of the more well-known districts such as the Willow Creek and Rock Creek District, the Moore Creek District, Granite Creek District, Idaho City Gold Belt, Quartzburg and more. This is not a well-known publication now back in print by Sylvanite Publishing.
Lindgren was a Swedish-born American geologist. He is known for introducing a system of ore classification.
Background
Lindgren was born on February 14, 1860, in Kalmar, Sweden, the son of Johan Magnus Lindgren and Emma Margareta Bergman. His father was a judge and a member of parliament, his mother the daughter of a clergyman, and a woman of distinguished lineage, and Lindgren grew up in a home of refinement and culture. A book on mineralogy and a visit at the age of ten to the west coast of Sweden, where rocks are beautifully exposed, combined to instill in him an interest in geology, which his father encouraged by enabling him to visit local mining districts. By the time he was seventeen, he had seen the mines of central Sweden and the famous old silver workings of Kongsberg in Norway.
Education
Encouraged by his parents, Lindgren entered the Royal Mining Academy at Freiberg, Saxony, at the age of eighteen, to study under an illustrious faculty, including the brilliant Alfred W. Stelzner. Here he was graduated as a mining engineer in 1882 and spent the next year in graduate work. He received honorary degrees from Princeton in 1916 and Harvard in 1935.
In June 1883 Lindgren sailed for America. A letter of introduction promptly led to a position on the staff of a survey which Raphael Pumpelly was directing for the Northern Pacific Railway. The survey was disbanded the next year, but in November 1884 Dr. George F. Becker, who headed the Pacific division of the United States Geological Survey, appointed Lindgren a member of his staff. Nine years of geological fieldwork in the western states followed, broken in 1897-1898 by a year of teaching at Stanford University, where one of Lindgren's pupils, a young man named Herbert Hoover, became a lifelong friend. Lindgren's long apprenticeship on the Geological Survey led ultimately to the position of chief geologist in 1911. Meanwhile, in 1908, Lindgren had begun lecturing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1912 he moved to Boston to become professor and head of the Institute's department of geology, though he did not sever his connection with the Geological Survey until 1915. He continued to teach at M.I.T. until his retirement in 1933, at the same time broadening his already extensive acquaintance with ore deposits by consulting work in Mexico, Chile, and Bolivia.
Lindgren's observations, reading, and teaching throughout his long career were progressively molding a consistent theory of ore deposition. When he came to America, the theory of lateral secretion was dominant, but Lindgren, as a pupil of Stelzner, did not share it. He held that the metals in veins and similar deposits reached their position not from adjoining rocks, with the aid of percolating waters of surface origin, but from intrusive magma, through the agency of hot ascending aqueous solutions (the hydrothermal theory). This view he and a few of his contemporaries advocated vigorously until during the first third of the century it became generally accepted. This concept of origin pointed to a genetic classification of mineral deposits. Previous classifications had been based on metals present, shape, and, to a limited degree, on origin, but they brought unlike things together. Lindgren's paper "The Relation of Ore-Deposition to Physical Conditions" was the first clear recognition that the assemblage of minerals present in a vein could serve as an index to the temperature and pressure at which the deposit formed. His classification of ore deposits, based on this principle, was elaborated through succeeding years.
His philosophy of varied aspects of geology was summed up in his widely used textbook Mineral Deposits. Editions of Mineral Deposits were published in 1913, 1919, 1928 and 1933. He died at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Not primarily interested in pigeonholing for its own sake, Lindgren was constantly curious as to how ore deposits came into being. He was among the first to recognize the importance of replacement, whereby, bit by bit, one mineral is deposited while another is carried away. To understand how minerals have crystallized, he made constant use of the laboratory microscope, and when the methods of metallographers were adapted to the study of polished surfaces of ores he was one of the pioneers in developing the new technique. Concerned only secondarily with structural geology, his approach was from the viewpoint of mineralogy and chemistry. Using his broad scientific background, he brought the growing science of physical chemistry to bear on geological problems and, in his later years, advocated the importance of colloidal processes in ore deposition.
Membership
Mining and Metallurgical Society of America
,
United States
1920
Society of Economic Geologists
,
United States
1922
Geological Society of America
,
United States
1924
American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers
,
United States
1931
Personality
Behind his externally serious mien, Lindgren seemed always to be suppressing a mute chuckle. In speaking he never lost the last trace of a fascinating Swedish accent, though he had a better command of English than do most native-born scientists and was able to write either in a flowing and entertaining style or in clear, terse technical language as the topic demanded. His intellectual attainments seem attributable to a rare combination of a retentive memory and exceptional reasoning power. Keen observation, first-hand acquaintance with most of the world's great ore deposits, and continuous critical reading of well-nigh everything published in his chosen field equipped him with a vast store of facts from which he had an almost uncanny capacity for drawing the correct conclusion.
Physical Characteristics:
Lindgren was tall and erect, with the spare physique of an outdoor man long accustomed to walking and climbing, but his eyes, perhaps overstrained by the demands of a high-power microscope, needed the aid of thick lenses.
Connections
On March 8, 1886, Lindgren married Ottolina Allstrin of Gothenburg, Sweden. They had no children. His wife died in 1929.