James Hall

James Hall 1811-98, American geologist and paleontologist, b. Hingham, Mass., grad. Rensselaer School (later Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), 1832. An authority on stratigraphy and invertebrate paleontology, he joined the New York state geological survey in 1836 and in 1839 became state geologist for New York. He wrote Paleontology of New York (8 vol. in 13, 1847-94), a monumental report on the paleontology of the state; his work formed the basis for the later geological histories of North America. He also served briefly as state geologist for Iowa and Wisconsin and was director (1866-94) of the New York State Museum at Albany.

Bibliography: See studies by R. C. Randall (1964) and J. M. Clarke (1921, repr. 1973).

Hall, James, Jr (1811–98) James Hall, Jr became recognized as America's foremost palaeontologist, whose life was devoted to collecting and describing fossils and to promoting state institutions concerned with the Earth sciences. He spent most of his life in New York State, joining the New York Geological Survey in 1836 as a curator of invertebrate fossils collected by Ebenezer Emmons and others. This resulted in the beautifully illustrated 13 volumes of The Palaeontology of New York State. In 1843 Hall was appointed State Palaeontologist.

So energetic was Hall in building up the collections that by 1857 he was in need of, and built, a new laboratory in Albany, the state capital. He then made a compelling plea for a state museum, with the result that he was appointed as its first curator in 1865, and in 1871 became the first director of what was soon to be the New York State Museum. Hall's experience and expertise in establishing this kind of institution led to six other states seeking his help in setting up their own equivalent bodies. They became productive, and thriving models for new Earth science centres in other states. Hall's achievements as scientist and administrator won him many honours.

Hall was the author of over 300 scientific works, some of them very large. In 1845 he described the Mesozoic fossils collected by the (J. C.) Frémont expedition to the south-western territories. Nothing like them was known in the east, and they aroused much scientific interest. Hall was interested in the environments in which his Palaeozoic fossils had existed when alive, and he was aware of the great thicknesses of Palaeozoic rocks in the Appalachian area as compared with equivalent strata in the mid-west. His concept (1857) of a great downfold or depression filling with sediment at the edge of a continent and then isostatically uplifted to produce the Appalachian fold ranges, was the first suggestion of an Appalachian geosyncline. Over 60 years passed before Stille's geosynclinal model was proposed.

D. L. Dineley

Hall, James (1811–98) American geologist, palaeontologist, and member of the US Geological Survey. A uniformitarian, he made detailed observations of the stratigraphy of the Appalachians. He proposed that the sediments were laid down in a trough, which subsided under their weight, before final uplift and erosion. He opposed catastrophist and contractionist hypotheses of mountain formation. See CATASTROPHISM; and CONTRACTING EARTH HYPOTHESIS.