CHARLES RICHARD VAN HISE 
1857-1918 
My first impressions of Van Hise were received from the gifted 
and lamented Irving, when we were close colleagues on the Wis- 
consin Geological Survey, and when young Van Hise was a student 
of geology and related sciences under Irving at the University of 
Wisconsin. Only those who had the good fortune to taste the rare 
flavor of the brusque humor of Irving can appreciate how charm- 
ingly he brought out the traits of his promising pupil as he told 
of their good-humored laboratory bouts over problems in hand. 
These little tales of the laboratory come back to me now as precious 
reminiscences at once of the trainer and the trained; as also of 
the crude state of petrological technique with which they had to 
struggle. It was just at the time when the polarizing microscope 
was coming into use in America in the examination of thin slices 
of crystalline rocks, and when only a few of the better-trained and 
bolder young men were venturing to try the new art. Young 
Van Hise, working under Irving on the crystalline rocks of central 
Wisconsin, came to think that he had discovered a new character- 
istic of a certain constituent under study and became sanguine 
that 1t would prove distinctive and constitute a contribution of 
some notable value at that early stage of the new art. He was 
naturally elated and confident, but Irving, playing the part of the 
conservative and critical trainer, kept the young enthusiast’s 
elation in curb by all sorts of objections, real and fanciful, and made 
light of the arguments he urged in support of his claims; but 
Van Hise held his ground sturdily and returned undauntedly to 
his lathe and his microscope to search out new evidences and to 
strengthen old ones until, in due time, he made good against all 
the probings and humorous pooh-poohings of his instructor. 
This earliest picture of Van Hise’s sturdiness of mind and 
invincible industry—reaffirmed as it has been so often in our long, 
intimate acquaintance since—has always seemed to me to portray 
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