Edward Salisbury Dana


Edward Salisbury Dana was an American mineralogist and physicist. He made important contributions to the study of minerals, especially in the field of crystallography.

Life and career

E. S. Dana was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of the geologist and mineralogist James Dwight Dana. He graduated from Yale College in 1870, where he had been a member of Scroll and Key, and then after two years with George J. Brush at the Sheffield Scientific School, spent another two years studying in Heidelberg and Vienna, specializing in crystal optics and crystallography. He then returned to Yale to take his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. He was a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He was appointed assistant professor of natural philosophy and astronomy at Yale in 1879 and then became professor of physics. His research and publishing was mainly in the field of mineralogy.
Dana became an editor of the American Journal of Science in 1875 and continued to direct it until 1926. In 1884 was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1885 he was made a trustee of the Peabody Museum of Yale. He was an elected member of scientific societies in Austria, Mexico, Russia, England, Scotland, and across the United States.

Personal memoir

From the Memorial by William F. Ford, published in American Mineralogist, 1936

Publications

Dana's two most important publications were his Textbook of Mineralogy and the monumental sixth edition of his father's System of Mineralogy.