John Casper Branner (1850 – 1922) was an American geologist and academic who discovered bauxite in Arkansas in 1887 as State Geologist. As State Geologist, he exposed gold-mining swindles then operating in Arkansas, for which the citizens of Bear City, Arkansas burned him in effigy, and the stock promoters tried to have him fired.[1] He was Chair of the Department of Botany and Geology at Indiana University. He served as President of the Indiana Academy of Science in 1889. He was President of the Seismological Society of America in 1911. He was the second President of Stanford University, serving from 1913 until his retirement in 1915. He was an expert in Brazilian geology, among many other things.
Branner was born in the town of New Market, Tennessee where his father was a merchant. In 1852, the family went to live on a farm given his father by his grandfather a mile east of Dandridge on the French Broad river. He grew up there and on an adjacent property to which the family moved in 1859. During the civil war he was very anxious to join the confederate army, and on two occasions left school for the purpose of enlisting. His age, however, prevented his being accepted; he was only thirteen.
In 1865, he went to school a year at New Market and in 1867, he spent a year at Maryville College. He left that institution in 1868, and in 1869, went to Ithaca, New York, to attend Cornell University. He passed a year in Ithaca Academy, and entered Cornell in 1870, in the so-called classical course. In 1874, without having completed his university studies, he went by way of Europe to Brazil with Charles Fred Hartt, then professor of geology at Cornell. In 1875, he was made assistant on the geological survey of Brazil and remained on that work until the survey was abolished by the government and Professor Hartt died. In 1879, he accepted a position as assistant engineer and interpreter for the São Cyriaco Gold Mining Company of Boston, and spent a year near Serro, state of Minas Geraes, in the diamond regions of Brazil. In 1881, he returned to the United States, but was sent back to South America by Thomas Edison in search of a vegetable fiber for use in his then newly invented incandescent electric lamp. In 1882, he returned to Cornell University, completed his studies and graduated. In 1883 to 1885, he was topographic geologist of the Geological Survey of Pennsylvania in the anthracite regions; in 1885, after receiving his Ph.D. from Indiana University, he was made professor of geology in the University of Indiana, a position he held until 1891, though he was absent on leave for several years. In 1887, he was appointed state geologist of Arkansas and in 1891, he was appointed Professor of Geology at Stanford University.
In 1913, he greatly contributed to genealogical research of the Shenandoah Valley by privately publishing Casper Branner of Virginia and his Descendants,[2] a 453 page work documenting the genealogy of the Branner family and in particular the descendants of his great great grandparents, Casper Branner (1729-1792) and wife Catherine (1730-1800).
A dormitory building at Stanford is named after him. Two of his Stanford students, United States President Herbert Hoover and his wife Lou Henry Hoover, dedicated their English translation of the medieval mining classic De re metallica to Branner.
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by David Starr Jordan |
President of Stanford
University 1913 – 1915 |
Succeeded by Ray Lyman Wilbur |
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   | John Casper Branner Presidential Papers, 1913-1917 - Guide to the John Casper Branner Presidential Papers, 1913-1917 |
| | Department of Special Collections and University Archives - SULAIR : Special Collections and University Archives |
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