Henry Carvill Lewis

Henry Carvill Lewis (November 16, 1853 - July 21, 1888), American geologist, was born in Philadelphia.

Educated in the University of Pennsylvania he took the degree of MA in 1876. He became attached to the Geological Survey of Pennsylvania in 1879, serving for three years as a volunteer member, and during this term he became greatly interested in the study of glacial phenomena. In 1880 he was chosen professor of mineralogy in the Philadelphia academy of natural sciences, and in 1833 he was appointed to the chair of geology in Haverford College, Pennsylvania.

During the winters of 1885 to 1887 he studied petrology under HF Rosenbusch at Heidelberg, and during the summers he investigated the glacial geology of northern Europe and the British Islands. His observations in North America, where he had studied under Professor GF Wright, Professor TC Chamberlin and Warren Upham, had demonstrated the former extension of land-ice, and the existence of great terminal moraines.

In 1884 his Report on the Terminal Moraine in Pennsylvania and New York was published: a work containing much information on the limits of the North American ice-sheet. In Britain he sought to trace in like manner the southern extent of the terminal moraines formed by British ice-sheets, but before his conclusions were matured he died at Manchester on the 21st of July 1888. The results of his observations were published in 1894 entitled Papers and Notes on the Glacial Geology of Great Britain and Ireland, edited by Dr HW Crosskey.

See Prof. Henry Carvill Lewis and his Work in Glacial Geology, by Warren Upham, Amer. Geol. vol. ii. (Dec. 1888) p. 371, with portrait.

Reference

• This entry incorporates public domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.