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[[image - Portrait of Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden]]

FERDINAND VANDEVEER HAYDEN (1829-1887)

American Geologist, was born at Westfield, Mass., on September 7, 1829. He graduated from Oberlin college in 1850 and from the Albany medical college in 1853 where he attracted the attention of Prof. James Hall, State geologist of New York, through whose influence he was induced to join F. B. Meek in an exploration of the "Bad Lands" of Dakota to make collections of fossils. The next two years were spent in a similar exploration of the Upper Missouri under the auspices of the American Fur Co., resulting in the discovery of an important collection of fossils, which was afterwards divided  between the academies of science of St. Louis and Philadelphia. In 1856 Lieut. G. K. Warren appointed him one of his assistants in the exploration of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers and of the Black Hills. In 1859 he was attached to Capt. W. F. Raynolds' expedition to the upper tributaries of the Yellowstone as surgeon and naturalist, one result of which was his Geological Report of the Explorations of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers in 1859-60 (1869).

During the Civil War Dr. Hayden was actively engaged as surgeon in the Federal army from 1862 to 1865, resigning to become professor of mineralogy and geology in the University of Pennsylvania, which position he retained until 1872. In 1867 he was appointed geologist in charge of the U. S. geological and geographical survey of the territories and from his twelve years of labor there resulted a most valuable series of volumes in all branches of natural history and economic science; and he issued in 1877 his Geological and Geographical Atlas of Colorado. Upon the reorganisaion and establishment of the U. S. Geological Survey in 1879, he acted for seven years as one of the geologists. He died at Philadelphia on December 22, 1887.

His other publications were: Sun Pictures of Rocky Mountain Scenery (1870). The Yellowstone National Park, illustrated by reproductions of water color sketches by Thomas Moran (1876). The Great West; its Attractions and Resources (1880). With F. B. Meek he wrote (Smithsonian Contributions, vol. 14, Art. 4) "Paleontology of the Upper Missouri, pt. I, Invertebrate." His valuable notes on Indian dialects are in The Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (1862), in the American Journal of Science (1862) and in The Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (1869). With A. R. C. Selwyn he wrote North American (1883) for Stanford's Compendium.
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Obituary notice of Dr. Hayden read before the American Philosophical Society by Prof. J. P. Leslie.

He represented in science the curiosity, the intelligence, the energy, the practical business talent of the western people. In a few years they came to adopted him as their favourite son of science. He exactly met the wants of the Great West. There was a vehemence and a sort of wildness in his nature as a man which won him success, cooperation, and enthusiastic reputation among all classes, high and low, wherever he went. * * * He popularized geology on the  grandest scale in the new States and Territories.  He easily and naturally affiliated with every kind of explorer, acting with such friendliness and manly justice toward those whom he employed as his co-workers that they pursued with hearty zeal the development of his plans.
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I think that no one who knows the history of geology in the United States can fail to recognize the fact that the present magnificent United States Geological Survey * * * is the legitimate child of Doctor Hayden's Territorial Survey's.

- Extracts from Encyclopaedia Brittanica, New International Encyclopaedia, and Merrill's Contributions to the History of American Geology.