Ulysses S. Grant IV

Ulysses S. Grant IV as a Lieutenant in World War I

Ulysses S. Grant IV (May 23, 1893 – March 11, 1977), was the son of Ulysses S. Grant, Jr. and the grandson of General of the Army and President of the United States Ulysses S. Grant. He was an American geologist and paleontologist known for his work on the fossil mollusks of the California Pacific Coast. He was born at his father's farm, Merryweather Farm, in Salem Center, Westchester County, New York. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to San Diego, California.

Grant studied geology at Harvard University, graduating cum laude in 1915. Following graduation he mined for gold in Mexico. During World War I, Grant enlisted in the United States Army as a private. By the end of the war, he was a second lieutenant. From 1919 to 1925 he was connected with the New York Stock Exchange. In 1926, he returned to school and took graduate courses at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1927 he entered the graduate program in paleontology at Stanford University. Grant received his doctorate in 1929.

After he received his doctorate, Grant worked at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County as the curator of invertebrate paleontology. Grant then taught paleontology at the University of California, Los Angeles beginning in 1931. He rose from instructor to chairman of the geology department, a post he held for eight years. He retired in 1959. Grant wrote several papers and often collaborated with Leo George Hertlein, his classmate at Stanford.

His first wife was Matilda Bartikofsky. They later divorced. In 1950 he married Frances Dean. They had one child named George Grant.

In 1953, Grant IV appeared on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life, where the consolation question was usually "Who is buried in Grant's tomb?".

Grant died at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California from lung failure caused by leukemia. Grant is buried at Greenwood Memorial Park (San Diego) alongside his father.

His cousin was Ulysses S. Grant III, the son of Frederick Dent Grant.

The works of Ulysses S. Grant IV

• "Catalogue of the Marine Pliocene and Pleistocene Mollusca of California and Adjacent Regions and a Special Treatment of the Pectinidae and Turridae" with Hoyt Rodney Gale. Memoirs of the San Diego Society of Natural History, Volume I, 1931.
• "Geology and Oil Possibilities of Southwestern San Diego County" with Leo George Hertlein, California Journal of Mines and Geology, 1939.
• "The Cenozoic Brachiopoda of Western North America" with Leo George Hertlein. University of California, Publications in Mathematics and Physical Sciences, 1944.
• "The Geology and Paleontology of the Marine Pliocene of San Diego, California. Part 1, Geology" with Leo George Hertlein. Memoirs of the San Diego Society of Natural History, Volume II, 1944.
• "The Geology and Paleontology of the Marine Pliocene of San Diego, California. Part 2a, Paleontology" with Leo George Hertlein. Memoirs of the San Diego Society of Natural History, 1960.
• " The Geology and Paleontology of the Marine Pliocene of San Diego, California. Part 2b, Paleontology" with Leo George Hertlein. Memoirs of the San Diego Society of Natural History, 1972.
• "A Sojourn In Baja California, 1915" Southern California Quarterly Vol. XLV, No. 2, June 1963
• "1913 / A Midsummer Motoring Trip". Desert Magazine 25 (3): 20. March 1962. 
  • "A Midsummer Motoring Trip". Historical Society of Southern California 43 (1): 85–96. March 1961. doi:10.2307/41169503. 

References

• Obituary from UCLA 1977
• Obituary from the Los Angeles Times March 13, 1977