Chamberlin, Rollin T. (Rollin Thomas), 1881-1948

Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin was born in 1843 in the area of Mattoon, Illinois: in his own words, "on the crest of the Shelbyville moraine…under the great six-tailed comet of 1843." He received his undergraduate degree from Beloit College in 1866. After completing graduate studies at the Universities of Wisconsin and Michigan, he returned to Beloit as Professor of Geology in 1873. He taught there and at Columbia University before serving as President of the University of Wisconsin from 1887 until 1892.

Chamberlin's education and early career coincided with an extremely important period in American geology, both in terms of knowledge and institutional structure. The expansion of mining, the discovery of North American dinosaurs, and the mapping of glaciers provided new opportunities for study. At universities geology was increasingly recognized as a discipline separate from geography and requiring its own department. The developing field was fostered by national organizations such as the United States Geological Survey (USGS, founded 1879) and the Geological Society of America (founded 1888). Chamberlin conducted his first research on glaciers and glacial movement. He was variously State Geologist of Wisconsin (1876 -1882), chief of the USGS Glacial Division (1881-1904) and geologist to the Peary Expedition in Greenland (1894). His work in Wisconsin articulated some of the basic laws of glacier movement and glacial stages, still accepted by geologists. His study of the multiple stages of glaciation informed his interest in climate change and the future habitability of earth.

Chamberlin was committed to scientific study as a means to materially and spiritually improve the human condition. His father was a Methodist preacher, and though Chamberlin opposed what he called "superstition" and "the dead weight of conservatism," he remained a Christian. He believed that by seeking to explain the history of humanity and the earth, both religion and science focused attention on important issues and freed individuals from everyday trivialities. In 1909 he reported to the University of Chicago's Oriental Education Commission on China's potential for developing scientific educational programs; throughout his career he wrote and spoke on pedagogy and the role of the university.

In 1892 Chamberlin left Wisconsin to chair the Department of Geology at the University of Chicago. He founded the Journal of Geology there in 1893. He was also active as a research associate of the Carnegie Foundation and president of the Chicago Academy of Science. During the second part of his career his research was concerned with the origins and formation of the earth, and through his collaboration with astronomer Forest Ray Moulton advanced the "Chamberlin-Moulton Planetesimal Hyposthesis" in 1904-1905. This theory of the solar system posited that planets had formed from the collision of planetesimals, or debris ejected from the sun. Though extremely influential at the time, the Planetesimal Hypothesis was disproven during the 1940s.

Chamberlin became emeritus faculty in 1919. He received geology's highest honour, the Penrose Medal, in 1926, and died in 1928. A lunar crater and a crater on Mars are named for him. He was survived by his son, Rollin Thomas Chamberlin (1881-1948), also a geologist and University of Chicago faculty member.

From the guide to the Chamberlin, Thomas Chrowder. Papers, 1878-1932, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.)