Alfred Hulse Brooks

Alfred Hulse Brooks, possibly at the time of his appointment to the Alaska Railroad Commission.

Alfred Hulse Brooks (July 18, 1871 – November 22, 1924) was an American Geologist and served as chief geologist for Alaska for the United States Geological Survey from 1903 to 1924. He was a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan and graduated from Harvard University in 1894.^[1] He is credited with discovering that the biggest mountain range in Arctic Alaska was separate from the Rocky Mountains.^[2]

In 1898, the federal government announced a systematic topographic and geologic survey of Alaska that would include renewed exploration of the Brooks Range. Alfred Hulse Brooks, the new head of the Alaskan branch of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), called the project "far more important than any previously done," due in large part because it "furnished the first clue to the geography and geology of the part of Alaska north of the Yukon Basin." Between 1899 and 1911, six major reconnaissance expeditions traversed the mountain range, mapping its topography and geology and defining the patterns of economic geology so important to prospectors and miners.^[3]

Every year from 1904 to 1916 and from 1919 to 1923, Brooks wrote summaries of Alaska's mineral industries. The missed years, during World War I, were those that he spent in France as chief geologist for the American Expeditionary Force in France.^[1]

Honors

• 1913 - Received the Charles P. Daly Medal of the American Geographical Society.^[4]
• 1913 - Received the Malta-Brun gold medal of the Geographical Society of Paris, France.^[4]
• The mineral Hulsite is named for Mr. Brooks.^[5]
• The Brooks Range, a mountain range that stretches from west to east across northern Alaska and into Canada's Yukon Territory, was named for Mr. Brooks in 1925

Publications

• "Preliminary report on the Ketchikan mining district, Alaska, with an introductory sketch of the geology of southeastern Alaska" by Alfred Hulse Brooks. US Geological Survey Professional Paper No. 1, 1902
• "Mineral resources of Alaska, report on progress of investigations in 1912" by Alfred Hulse Brooks, G.C. Martin, Philip Sidney Smith. US Geological Survey Bulletin No. 542, 1913. 308 p.
• "The iron and associated industries of Lorraine, the Saare district, Luxemburg, and Belgium" by Alfred H. Brooks and Morris F. La Croix. US Geological Survey Bulletin No. 703, 1920.
• "The German defenses of the Lorraine Front" by Alfred Hulse Brooks. United States Army, American Expeditionary Forces. 1918.
• "The geography and geology of Alaska : a summary of existing knowledge" by Alfred Hulse Brooks, Cleveland Abbe, and Richard Urquhart Goode. US Geological Survey Professional Paper No. 45, 1906.

Sources

• "Alfred Hulse Brooks" by George Otis Smith Science, Volume 61, Issue 1569, pp. 80–81
• "Memorial of Alfred Hulse Brooks" by Philip Sidney Smith. Geological Society of America Bulletin; March 1926; v. 37; no. 1; p. 15-48

References