Bretz, J. Harlen, 1882-1981

Geologist. A.B. Albion Colllege, 1905. Ph. D., University of Chicago, 1913. Assistant professor, University of Washington, 1913. Instructor, University of Chicago, 1914-1915; assistant professor, 1915-1921; associate professor, 1921-1926; professor, 1926-1947.

J Harlen Bretz was born in 1882 in Ionia County, Michigan. After receiving an A.B. from Albion College in 1905, he taught high school for several years in Seattle, Washington, where he began independent field work in the geology of the Puget Sound region. In 1911, Bretz entered the University of Chicago as a graduate fellow in geology, studying under Thomas C. Chamberlin, Rollin D. Salisbury, and Stuart Weller. Upon completing his Ph.D. in 1913, he accepted a position at the University of Washington as assistant professor of geology. One year later, at the invitation of Salisbury, he returned to the University of Chicago as an Instructor in Geology (1914-1915). Bretz spent the remainder of his career at Chicago as Assistant Professor (1915-1921), Associate Professor (1921-1926), and Professor of Geology (1926-1947).

Bretz' major contribution to geology was his study of the channeled scablands, a rugged, heavily scoured section of the Columbia plate in eastern Washington. Challenging the gradualist uniformitarianism that had governed previous interpretations of the area, Bretz attributed the topography of the scablands to the action of a sudden, catastrophic flood brought on by the release of waters from glacial Lake Missoula. Bretz' theory was disputed by many leading authorities in Pleistocene geology and attracted particularly severe criticism from the U.S. Geological Survey at a meeting of the Geological Society of Washington, D.C. in 1927. Later studies by Bretz and others, however, contributed supporting evidence to the theory, and final confirmation was supplied by aerial photographs taken from orbiting satellites in the mid-1970's. By that time, the geological profession had reversed itself and embraced the theory it once rejected, hailing Bretz in publications and at conferences as a courageous empiricist vindicated by fact.

Bretz also made important advances in the geological study of limestone caves and karst landscapes. In 1930, geologist William Morris Davis had argued that caves were not formed above the water table, as was commonly supposed, but were instead the result of underground water circulating below the water table. Bretz' work on the caves of Missouri, begun in the late 1930's, furnished crucial evidence to support Davis' theory and went on to make substantial contributions to the description of limestone caverns and the analysis of the general erosional history of the Ozark Uplift.

Results of Bretz' field work in Washington, Missouri, Alberta, Greenland, Bermuda, and the Chicago region were published in numerous articles and a number of monographic studies, including Glaciation of the Puget Sound Region (1913), Geology of the Chicago Region (1939-1956), Earth Sciences: Meteorology, Oceanography, Geology (1940), Caves of Missouri (1956), and Geomorphic History of the Ozarks of Missouri (1965). Bretz also received two major professional awards, the Niel A. Miner Award of the National Association of Geology Teachers in 1959, and the Penrose Medal of the Geological Society of America in 1979. Bretz died in 1981 at his home in Homewood, Illinois, at the age of 98.