Clarence Dutton

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Clarence Edward Dutton (May 15, 1841, Wallingford, CT – January 4, 1912, Englewood, NJ) was an American geologist and one of the founders of seismology, in which his chief contribution was the notion of isostasy: that the equilibrium in the crust of the earth is governed by the flow or yielding of the underlying rock (the mantle) under gravitational stress.

He graduated from Yale University in 1860 and took postgraduate courses there until 1862, when he enlisted in the 21st Connecticut Volunteers; he fought at Fredericksburg, Suffolk, VA, Nashville and Petersburg. In 1864 he passed by competitive examination into the Ordnance Corps, serving at arsenals in Troy, NY, Frankfort, KY and Washington, DC.

In 1875 he retired from the Army with the rank of major, and worked for the U. S. Geological Survey from 1875 to 1891, publishing papers on the geology of the various areas in which he worked: the high plateaus of central Utah (1875–1877), the Tertiary history of the Grand Canyon district (1877–1880).

In 1890 he wrote an authoritative monograph on the causes of the Charleston earthquake of 1886, one of the earliest thorough scientific reports on a large earthquake. As chief of the USGS Division of Volcanic Geology for the survey, he also studied volcanism in Hawaii and the coastal ranges of Oregon and California (1885–1888). He helped coordinate the scientific response to a large earthquake in Sonora, Mexico, in 1887.

In 1891 he retired from the USGS to served as commander of the arsenal of San Antonio, TX then as ordnance officer of the department of Texas.

His best-known and most important work, summarizing his own discoveries and the state of his discipline, is Earthquakes in the Light of the New Seismology (1904). He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1884.