Joseph LeConte

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For the Sierra Nevada explorer and son of Joseph LeConte, see Joseph Nisbet LeConte.

Joseph LeConte

Joseph Le Conte (February 26, 1823 - June 6, 1901) was an American geologist.

Of Huguenot descent, he was born in Liberty County, Georgia to Louis Le Conte, patriarch of the noted Le Conte family. He was educated at Franklin College in Athens, Georgia (now the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia), where he graduated in 1841; he afterwards studied medicine and received his degree at the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1845. After practising for three or four years at Macon, Georgia, he entered Harvard University, and studied natural history under Louis Agassiz.

An excursion made with Professors J. Hall and Agassiz to the Helderberg mountains of New York developed a keen interest in geology. After graduating at Harvard, Le Conte in 1851 accompanied Agassiz on an expedition to study the Florida reefs. On his return he became professor of natural science in Oglethorpe University which was located in Midway, Georgia at the time; and from December of 1852 until 1856 professor of natural history and geology at Franklin College. From 1857 to 1869 he was a professor of chemistry and geology at South Carolina College, which is now the University of South Carolina.

On January 14, 1846, he married Caroline Nisbet, a niece of Eugenius A. Nisbet. The LeContes had four children grow to adulthood: Emma Florence Le Conte, Sarah Elizabeth Le Conte, Caroline Eaton Le Conte, and Joseph Nisbet Le Conte.

During the Civil War Le Conte continued to teach in South Carolina. He also produced medicine and supervised the niter works (to manufacture explosives) for the Confederacy. However, after the war he continued to teach, but eventually found Reconstruction politics intolerable, with moves of the Reconstruction-era Legislature to deeply cut funding to South Carolina College.[1]

In 1869, he moved to Berkeley, California to help organize the University of California, along with his brother John Le Conte. He was appointed the first professor of geology and natural history at the University, a post which he held until his death.

He published a series of papers on monocular and binocular vision, and also on psychology. His chief contributions, however, related to geology, and in all he wrote he was lucid and philosophical. He described the fissure-eruptions in western America, discoursed on earth-crust movements and their causes and on the great features of the earths surface. As separate works he published Elements of Geology (1878, 5th ed. 1889); Religion and Science (1874); and Evolution: its History, its Evidences, and its Relation to Religious Thought (1888). In 1874, he was nominated to the National Academy of Sciences. He was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1892, and of the Geological Society of America in 1896.

Le Conte is also noted for his exploration and preservation of the Sierra Nevada of California, USA. He first visited Yosemite Valley in 1870, where he became friends with John Muir and started exploring the Sierra. He became concerned that resource exploitation (such as sheepherding) would ruin the Sierra, so co-founded the Sierra Club with Muir and others in 1892. He was a director of the Sierra Club from 1892 through 1898. His son, Joseph N. Le Conte, was also a noted professor and Sierra Club member.

He died of a heart attack in the Yosemite Valley, California, on the June 6, 1901, right before the Sierra Club's first High Trip. The Sierra Club built the LeConte Memorial Lodge in his honor in 1904. The Le Conte Canyon, Le Conte Divide, Le Conte Falls and Mount Le Conte were named after him [2]. He is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.