1700 W Olney Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19141, United States
Gabb was admitted to the prestigious Central High School of Philadelphia. He distinguished himself in his studies and showed an interest in natural history, conchology and geology. He graduated in 1857 with a bachelor of arts degree.
1700 W Olney Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19141, United States
Gabb was admitted to the prestigious Central High School of Philadelphia. He distinguished himself in his studies and showed an interest in natural history, conchology and geology. He graduated in 1857 with a bachelor of arts degree.
William More Gabb was an American geologist and paleontologist. He was part of topographical and geologic surveys at California, Santo Domingo, and Costa Rica.
Background
William Gabb was born on January 20, 1839, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. His father, Joseph Gabb, was a salesman and may have died when the boy was fourteen, at which lime his mother, known only as J. H. More Gabb, became a milliner.
Education
William graduated from Jefferson Grammar School at age thirteen and was admitted to the prestigious Central High School of Philadelphia. He distinguished himself in his studies and showed an interest in natural history, conchology, and geology. He graduated in 1857 with a bachelor of arts degree. He became a good friend of George H. Horn, later a paleontologist and entomologist, and George W. Tryon, Jr., later a conchologist. In 1857 Gabb chose geology as his field and sought aid from the noted James Hall, whose pupil and assistant he became. In 1860 he spent some time at the Philadelphia Academy.
Gabb briefly joined the enthusiastic scientific group around Spencer F. Baird at the Smithsonian Institution in 1861. Recommended as a foremost authority on Cretaceous fossils, the next year Gabb joined the California State Geological Survey under Josiah Dwight Whitney. For six years he traveled throughout much of California and beyond, from Vancouver Island to the tip of Baja California. From 1869 to 1872 he conducted a topographical and geologic survey of Santo Domingo for its government and, from 1873 to 1876, a similar survey in Costa Rica. Tuberculosis ended his career.
As part of the California survey, Gabb wrote monographs on the state’s Upper Mesozoic and Tertiary rocks. After Santo Domingo survey he published his findings in an extended memoir, On the Topography and Geology of Santo Domingo. On his extensive journeys, he collected many geologic, ethnologic, entomological, and other natural history specimens for the Smithsonian Institution and other museums.