page_title: Benjamin Kendall Emerson
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Benjamin Kendall Emerson / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Benjamin Kendall Emerson (December 20, 1843 – April 7, 1932)
context_page_description: Benjamin Kendall Emerson was an American geologist and author.
context_section_description: Emerson attended Amherst College, where he joined the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and from which he graduated in 1865 as valedictorian. He went on to study in Germany at the University of Berlin, and received his doctorate from the University of Göttingen in 1870.  He returned to the United States where he joined the faculty at Amherst, where he was professor of geology and related sciences from 1872 to 1917 and simultaneously at Smith College from 1878 to 1912.  He was also assistant geologist from 1890 to 1896, and later geologist from 1896 to 1920 for the United States Geological Survey.  He helped found the Geological Society of America and was its president in 1899.
  In 1893 he was seriously injured in a train wreck in Ohio, but he recovered. In 1897 he was elected vice president of the International Geological Congress, and attended the meeting of the Congress in St Petersburg, Russia. He followed this with an excursion through Siberia. In 1899 he accompanied the Harriman Alaska Expedition, where Mount Emerson bears his name.
  His chief field of study was the geology of western Massachusetts, the Connecticut River valley, and Rhode Island.
caption: Emerson c. 1867
exif: {}