GROVE KARL GILBERT
GILBERT, GROVE KARL, has been a geologist in the service of the United States since 1871, being connected with the Wheeler survey from 1871 to 1874, with the Powell survey from 1874 to 1879, and with the present United States Geological Survey from its organization in 1879.
He was born in Rochester, New York, May 6, 1843. He was the son of Grove Sheldon Gilbert, a portrait painter of very high merit who was made an honorary member of the National Academy of Design in 1848. "A man of retiring disposition in many ways, he underestimated his professional ability; he was intensely conscientious, often to his own detriment." He was one of the original abolitionists of western New York.
Young Gilbert was fond of study and especially of mathematics. "As a part of home economy " he says, "I assisted in repairs and minor constructions, and I thus acquired manual dexterity and facility in mechanical adaptations which were serviceable in various ways in later life." His primary and secondary educational training was chiefly in the public, but partly in the private schools of Rochester, and later with tutors. He was graduated from the University of Rochester in 1862. He at once took a position as teacher at Jackson, Michigan; but the work was uncongenial, and he found employment under the direction of Professor Henry A. Ward, of Rochester, in an establishment devoted to the preparation and installation of casts of fossils, for museums. He was in this position for five years; his work was manual, classificatory, executive and literary. He was introduced by it to scientific study in zoology, anatomy, geology and mineralogy. He selected geology as his profession, in 1869, when he was twenty-six years old, and joined the Ohio Geological Survey as a volunteer assistant in geology. Two years later he entered the Government service. In 1898 Rochester university conferred on him the honorary degree of LL.D.; and the same degree was given him by the University of Wisconsin, in 1904.
