ISRAEL COOK RUSSELL. 855 



ISRAEL COOK RUSSELL (1852-1906) 



Fellow in Class II, Section 1, 1904. 



The bones of a living memorial of I. C. Russell are found in the 

 successive volumes of Who's Who down to 1906-7. Among the 

 notices shortly after his death two are pre-eminent, — the one by 

 Bailey Willis, his colleague on the U. S. Geological Survey,^ which 

 contains a full bibliography. This notice was prepared for the Geo- 

 logical Society of America, of which Russell was President when he 

 died, and for which he had prepared his Presidential Address just 

 before he was stricken with pneumonia, his last sickness. The other 

 was by one of his colleagues at Ann Arbor, Dr. Chas. A. Davis,* who 

 himself has just been called from this life. 



Professor Russell's life may be divided into three parts: — 

 1. Before his connection with the Geological Survey. He was born 

 at Garrattsville, N. Y., Dec. 10, 1852, son of Barnabas Russell and 

 Louisa Sherman Cook Russell. He was of New England descent, and 

 Willis tells good stories of the New England reserve characteristic of 

 his ancestors and somewhat of Russell himself. When he was twelve 

 years old he moved to Plainfield, N. J. He was then on the Newark 

 formation, a monographic study of which was one of his principal 

 scientific works. From his birth until the time of his connection with 

 the United States Geological Survey we might consider him in train- 

 ing, — first in the High School near his home, then in the Hasbrook 

 Institute in Jersey City, next in New York University (A. B. and 

 C. E. 1872) then in the Columbia School of Mines. In 1874 he was 

 photographer and naturalist to the U. S. Transit of Venus Expedition 

 to New Zealand and Kerguelen Island. When he came back he was 

 made assistant Professor of Geology at the Columbia School of Mines 

 and was there from 1875 to 1877. This time included a season in 

 New Mexico and a journey to Europe and finished the first quarter 

 century of his life. Probably the happiest and most fruitful part of 

 his career was the period from 1875 to 1892. 



3 (Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Vol. 18, p. 582). 



4 (Published in the 9th report of the Michigan Academy of Sciences for 1907, 

 p. 28). See also Science, Oct. 5, 1906, vol. 24, p. 427, and Journal of Geology, 

 vol. 14 (1906), p. 663. 



