biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1842–1901)
|
| biography:
| Geologist, born in Newport, Rhode Island, USA. After graduating from Yale (1862), he crossed the USA on horseback and joined the California Geological Survey (1863–6). He then took charge of a survey of territory from E Colorado to California (1866–7). His observations while directing the US exploration of the 40th parallel (1867–78) resulted in his classic volume, Systematic Geology (1878), and he is credited with introducing the use of contour lines on maps to indicate topographic features. He was instrumental in forming the US Geological Survey and was then appointed its first head (1879–81), after which he entered private practice as a mining engineer (1881–93). Even his geological writings displayed his literary talents and he collected a series of Atlantic Monthly articles in Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada (1872). While in Washington, DC, he had become one of the so-called ‘Five of Hearts’, an elite circle including Henry Adams and his wife, Marian, and John Hays and his wife, Clara. Only after his death did it emerge that King had completely hidden from even his closest friends that in 1887 he had begun an affair with an African-American woman, Ada Copeland, in Brooklyn. He used the name John Todd with her and explained his frequent absences by claiming he worked as a railroad porter; eventually he married her and they had five children. His elite friends, once they recovered from the shock of the discovery, helped the family after his death. |
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