Stanford University School of Earth Science

The first Stanford Geological Survey, June 1893.

School History

Earth Sciences at Stanford can trace its roots to the university's beginnings, when Stanford's first president, David Starr Jordan, hired John Casper Branner, a geologist, as the university's first professor. The search for and extraction of natural resources was the focus of Branner's geology department during that period of Western development.
Looking ahead to the twenty-first century, basic research will continue to elucidate the physical, chemical, and biological processes that make Earth materials, shape the landscape, and control the emplacement and recovery of mineral, hydrocarbon, and geothermal resources. Improved description of fundamental mechanisms will permit the separation of anthropogenic climate variations from naturally occurring ones, the ability to predict how organic and inorganic pollutants migrate in the soil, an understanding of how faults form and earthquakes begin, and the optimum use of energy resources.
The goal of the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford is to build the base of Earth science, both for its own sake and for its application to the problems and opportunities we will face in the next century. I hope you will enjoy the stories and photos along the timeline that illustrates our path from 1891 to the present.
-Lynn Orr
Dean of the School of Earth Sciences, 1995-2002

If you would like to contribute your own reminiscences to the GeoHistory archives, or add your comments and suggestions, please contact:

Cynthia Gori
School of Earth Sciences
Stanford University
Mitchell Building 101
Stanford, CA 94305-2210
Telephone: (650) 725-4395

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