Guyot, Arnold Henri (1807-1884)

Swiss geologist and geographer

Arnold Henri Guyot's geological field studies advanced the knowledge of lakes , glaciers , ice ages , mountains, erratic boulders, evolution , and weather .

Guyot was born in Boudevilliers, Switzerland, on September 28, 1807. After graduating from the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1825, he went to Germany to continue his studies in botany, zoology, entomology, geography, and theology. While living and studying with botanist Alexander Braun (1805–1877) in Karlsruhe, Germany, he met naturalist Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) and botanist Karl Friedrich Schimper (1803–1867), who would later coin the term "ice age." During this time, Guyot considered becoming a minister, but decided instead on a career in science. He received his doctorate in geology from the University of Berlin in 1835 with a dissertation on lakes. Among his professors at Berlin was the geographer Carl Ritter (1779–1859).

For the next four years, Guyot worked as a private tutor for the family of the Count of Pourtalès-Gorgier in Paris and traveled throughout Europe . Reacquainted with Agassiz in Paris in 1838, Guyot became interested in glaciers, though he disagreed with Agassiz on many points of interpretation. They decided to collaborate on a study of Alpine glaciers, but through a misunderstanding between them, the resultant publication appeared under Agassiz's name alone in 1847. Guyot and Agassiz remained friends, but Guyot only received credit for his work on this project in the 1880s, after both his and Agassiz's deaths.

Pursuing research in botany, geology, geography, glaciology, meteorology , and cartography , Guyot taught history, natural history, and physical geography at the Neuchâtel Academy from 1839 until the Revolutions of 1848 closed that institution and deprived him of his livelihood. In consequence, he, Agassiz, and many other first-rate scientists immigrated to America. Lectures he presented at the Lowell Technological Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, published as Earth and Man in 1849, quickly established his reputation in the English-speaking world.

In 1854, Guyot became professor of geology and physical geography at Princeton University, where he remained until his death in Princeton, New Jersey, on February 8, 1884. He founded what became the Princeton Department of Geosciences in 1855 and the Princeton Museum of Natural History in 1856. Princeton named him the first John I. Blair professor of geology in 1864. During his summers on vacation from Princeton, Guyot conducted extensive on-site meteorological studies of the Appalachians from Mt. Katahdin, Maine, to Mt. Oglethorpe, Georgia, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution. These explorations eventually led to the creation of the Appalachian Trail. He encouraged his student, William Berryman Scott (1858–1947), later the second Blair professor, to lead a dangerous expedition to Colorado to gather fossils in 1877.

The "guyot," a flat-topped undersea mountain, was named for him by the sixth Blair professor, Harry Hammond Hess (1906–1969). Also named in his honor are three mountains, one in New Hampshire, one on the North Carolina-Tennessee border, and one in Colorado, as well as Guyot Hall, the geology building at Princeton.

See also Evolution, evidence of; Glacial landforms; Glaciation; Moraines; Mountain chains; Weather forecasting methods; Rock