Professor Lawson Tells
His Story
From the California Monthly's, Our Distinguished Faculty
By Andrew C. Lawson
1951
In the spring of 1890 I resigned from the staff of the
Geological Survey of Canada located at Ottawa, Ontario. I had been attracted
to that bureau for ten years, engaged chiefly in the study and mapping of the
pre-Cambrian rocks in the region of Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake between
Lake Superior and Winnipeg.
My first of these ten years, however, involved a trip across
the prairies of Canada into the headwaters of the Athabaska, made with horses.
For the other nine years I moved about in a canoe, surveying lakes and rocky
shores and at the same time making a study of the rocks.
When I left Ottawa I headed for the west coast of Canada and
with my wife made my home in Vancouver, B.C. I was a free lance in geology,
and was occupied for most of the summer of 1890 in a search for coal for the
new Canadian Pacific Railway Co.
I got back from the field in the Queen Charlotte Islands early
in November, to find my first-born a month old. In my mail I found two letters
which interested me greatly. One was from G.K. Gilbert, chief geologist of the
U.S. Geological Survey, offering me a post on the Survey, and the other was
from Professor Joseph LeConte, offering me a position on the staff of the
department of geology in the University of California at Berkeley. Both were
attractive offers and it took me two days to decide between them.
I concluded that I had not seen enough of the West Coast and
accepted the Berkeley offer. I landed with my family at my future home on
November 11, and became established the next day on the top story of South
Hall in charge of some courses in geology and mineralogy under LeConte.
Professor Martin Kellogg was then Acting Professor of the
University. My predecessor, Professor A.W. Jackson, had not only resigned but
had also left Berkeley, and I never met him.
I at once organized and began teaching courses on
determinative mineralogy, economic geology, crystallography and field geology.
The field courses in geology, as part of the requirement for a degree, was new
not only for the University at Berkeley, but for the entire country. Today
such a course is given in almost all universities where geology is taught. A
Sunday morning walk by the professor of the subject accompanied by some
students, was of course by no means uncommon; but it was not required as a
discipline for a degree in this country until prescribed as such at Berkeley.
Subsequent to 1890 a course in field geology, with credit for a degree, has
not only been optional, with of course prerequisites, but in the College of
Mining it became a rigorously enforced requirement for the bachelor's degree.
Before coming to Berkeley I had never taught in any college.
My appointment was based upon my published work in geology, which had to do
with a better understanding of the pre-Cambrian rocks of Canada. The first
course in field geology given in this country as a part of the requirement for
the bachelor's degree was thus new to me as well as to my students, who were
enrolled for the most part in the College of Mining. It comprised usually Saturday
of each week in term time, and ten or more days in vacation for protracted
trips into the more interesting parts of the country remote from Berkeley.
The outstanding feature of the field course was companionship.
The students got well acquainted with one another and with their professor,
and the medium of both acquaintanceships was curiosity as to what kind of
earth this is upon which we live. The professor, it is almost needless to say,
rapidly acquired an intimate knowledge of his students.
In the laboratories of South Hall I gave a course on
determinative mineralogy, another on the optical properties of crystals, and
still another on petrology. These courses occupied most of my time for nine or
ten years.
I made time, however, to get acquainted with the outstanding
features of the geology of California, particularly from a physiographic point
of view. Besides this I spent one summer vacation in going back to Lake
Superior to observe and level the ancient shore lines of that vast basin. This
I did by skirting the shore of the lake in a small boat from Duluth to Sault
Ste. Marie, and leveling up to the old shore lines from the present lake
level, in the year 1891. For the rest of the period from 1890 to 1900 I was
engaged in the detailed study and geological mapping of the region about the
Bay of San Francisco, the results of which were published some years later as
the San Francisco Folio of the Geological Survey.
After the death of my chief, Joseph LeConte, in 1901, I took
over the course in general geology and carried it on till my retirement in
1928.
In that course I always lectured to a full house, and from the
entrance to the lecture desk I had to make my way always through cheers that
filed the whole building. This generous salutation had an abrupt ending when I
was ready to speak; and there was always a moment of stillness in which the
drop of a pin in any part of the room might be heard. Then I made all the
noise.
__________
Lawson, Andrew C. "Our Distinguished Faculty:
Professor Lawson Tells His Story."
California Monthly. Vol. LXI, Alumni Publication,
University of California, No. 1
(September, 1950), p. 16.
-----
[Return to A. Lawson Page]
