Walcott
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
CHARLES DOOLITTLE, an American scientist, born in New York Mills, N. Y., Y., in 1850. He was educated in the public schools of Utica, N. Y., and received honorary degrees from a number of American and foreign universities. He early in life began to devote himself to geological research. In 1876 he became assistant in the New York State Survey. In 1879 he became assistant geologist of the United States Geological Survey, making the Cambrian rocks and faunas of the United States his especial subjects of inquiry, the results of which he presented before the International Geological Congress, at London, in 1888. From 1889 to 1893 he was paleontologist in charge of invertebrate paleontology; from 1893 to 1894 geologist in general charge of geology and paleontology; from 1894 to 1907 director of the United States Geological Survey. In 1892 he became honorary curator of the department of paleontology at the National Museum, and in 1907 secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. From 1902 to 1905 he was also secretary of the Carnegie Institution, Washington, being also a member of its Board of Trustees. From 1905 to 1907 he was director of the United States Reclamation Service. He was also at various times a member and an officer of the National Academy of Sciences, and of many other domestic and foreign scientific associations. Besides many reports and papers on geological and paleontological subjects, he also wrote "The Trilobite"; "Paleontology of the Eureka District"; "The Cambrian Faunas of North America"; "The Fauna of the Lower Cambrian Olenellus Zone "; " Pre - Cambrian siliferous Formations "; " Papers "; " Cambrian Geology and ontology"; "Cambrian B "The Cambrian Faunas of China"; "The Cambrian and Its Problems in the Cordilleran Region"; "Pre-Cambrian Algonkian Algal Flora"; "Discovery of Algonkian Bacteria"; "Evidences of Primitive Life"; "Appendages of Trilobites."
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's, writing in 1921, lists Walcott's Cambrian papers without naming the find that made him famous: the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, which he began quarrying in 1909 and whose soft-bodied fossils he described in the very reports the entry catalogues. Walcott stayed on as Secretary of the Smithsonian until his death in 1927, and had also helped establish the advisory committee for aeronautics (NACA, 1915) that eventually became NASA. His Burgess creatures were re-examined from the 1960s by Harry Whittington and colleagues, who concluded that animals such as Opabinia and Anomalocaris did not fit the modern groups Walcott had assigned them to; Stephen Jay Gould's "Wonderful Life" (1989) made that revision, and Walcott himself, widely known. The quarry is now protected within the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage listing and remains the standard evidence for the Cambrian explosion.
Written for this edition, 2026.