William Crosby

January 14, 1850 (age 75)

He must have been a student of unusual promise, for in the fall of the same year he received an appointment as assistant in the geological department in the Institute, where in the course of time he became full professor and head of the department. Crosby was from the start an original worker and an inspiring teacher. He was capable of an amount of patient drudgery in his work that would have been far from congenial to most; and of gathering material, handling and preparing it for his classes or his wider audiences at the Boston Society of Natural History, where he had become a curator, he never tired. Forced by almost total deafness to retire from teaching, he devoted himself after 1906 largely to work pertaining to various phases of economic geology. As an expert in mining problems he covered in more or less detail the whole western mining region, besides many of the states in the East. It was, however, in problems relating to water supply and storage dams in which intricate problems of underground structure were involved, that he became most deeply interested, and widely and favorably known. This work often involved responsibility for large financial outlay, as in his studies of the Muscle Shoals region in Alabama. He served as consulting engineer for the celebrated Arrow Dam in Idaho, the highest in the world; the dams on the Medina River in Texas; the Conchos River in Mexico, and the great dam across the Mississippi River at Keokuk, Iowa, the third longest in the world. He was consulting geologist to the Board of Water Supply of New York City during 1906-12, investigated the conditions for the Ashokan and Kensico dams, the deep Hudson River siphons, and the Catskill aqueduct. He was also called as consulting geologist for three large dams in Spain. He died in Boston on December 31, 1925.

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Works

book

Geological collections; dynamical geology and petrography

(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

Tables for the Determination of Common Minerals

(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

Tables for the Determination of Common Minerals - Scholar's Choice Edition

( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

Tables for the determination of common minerals chiefly by their physical properties (Vol-1): with confirmatory chemical tests

(This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

Physical history of the Boston basin

(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

Contributions to the Geology of Eastern Massachusetts

(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

Common minerals and rocks

(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

Tables for the determination of common minerals chiefly by their physical properties with confirmatory chemical tests

(This book is a replica, produced from digital images of t...)

Geology of the Boston Basin, Volume 1, part 3

(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

Geology of the Boston Basin, Vol. 1: Part III, the Blue Hills Complex (Classic Reprint)

(Excerpt from Geology of the Boston Basin, Vol. 1: Part II...)

Tables for the Determination of Common Minerals Chiefly for Their Physical Properties With Confirmatory Chemical Tests

Contributions to the Geology of Eastern Massachusetts

(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

William Otis Crosby

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engineer geologist

Background

William Otis Crosby, son of Francis William and Hannah (Ballard) Crosby, both of English descent, was born on January 14, 1850 in Decatur, Ohio.

His father was a school-teacher who shortly after the close of the Civil War went south and became superintendent of a gold-mine in North Carolina.

Education

In North Carolina the boy gained his first insight into the problems of economic geology.

In 1871 he accompanied his father, who had become interested in a silver-mine, to Georgetown, Colorado, and while there met President Runkle with a party of students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and accompanied them on one of their trips.

As was to be expected, such association aroused in him sufficient interest to cause him to enter upon a course of study at the Institute, from which he graduated in 1876.

Career

He must have been a student of unusual promise, for in the fall of the same year he received an appointment as assistant in the geological department in the Institute, where in the course of time he became full professor and head of the department.

Crosby was from the start an original worker and an inspiring teacher. He was capable of an amount of patient drudgery in his work that would have been far from congenial to most; and of gathering material, handling and preparing it for his classes or his wider audiences at the Boston Society of Natural History, where he had become a curator, he never tired.

Forced by almost total deafness to retire from teaching, he devoted himself after 1906 largely to work pertaining to various phases of economic geology.

As an expert in mining problems he covered in more or less detail the whole western mining region, besides many of the states in the East.

It was, however, in problems relating to water supply and storage dams in which intricate problems of underground structure were involved, that he became most deeply interested, and widely and favorably known. This work often involved responsibility for large financial outlay, as in his studies of the Muscle Shoals region in Alabama.

He served as consulting engineer for the celebrated Arrow Dam in Idaho, the highest in the world; the dams on the Medina River in Texas; the Conchos River in Mexico, and the great dam across the Mississippi River at Keokuk, Iowa, the third longest in the world. He was consulting geologist to the Board of Water Supply of New York City during 1906-12, investigated the conditions for the Ashokan and Kensico dams, the deep Hudson River siphons, and the Catskill aqueduct. He was also called as consulting geologist for three large dams in Spain.

He died in Boston on December 31, 1925.

Achievements

He became identified with many of the most important hydraulic operations in America. Crosby’s publications cover a considerable range of subjects. Of greatest importance probably from the standpoint of systematic geology, and involving the most detailed field work over a considerable area was his Geology of the Boston Basin, (1893 - 1900).

Works

Geological collections; dynamical geology and petrography Geological collections; dynamical geology and petrography

Tables for the Determination of Common Minerals Tables for the Determination of Common Minerals

$Tables for the Determination of Common Minerals - Scholar\'s Choice Edition Tables for the Determination of Common Minerals - Scholar\'s Choice Edition$