The American chemist and geologist Josiah Dwight Whitney (1819-1896) was instrumental in placing mining geology on a firm scientific basis.

Josiah Dwight Whitney was born in Northampton, Mass., on Nov. 23, 1819, the son of a local banker. After graduating from Yale in 1839, he studied chemistry with Robert Hare in Philadelphia. In 1840 Whitney joined Charles T. Jackson as an unpaid assistant in the geological survey of New Hampshire. Whitney studied chemistry and geology with some of the leading scientists of France and Germany from 1842 to 1847.

In 1847 Jackson engaged Whitney to assist in a survey of the mineral lands of the upper peninsula of Michigan. Then followed a period as a consulting expert in mining, and during this time he compiled the information that appeared in his book Metallic Wealth of the United States (1854), which remained the standard reference for nearly two decades. Also in 1854, he married Louisa Goddard Howe of...