14 Facts About Nathaniel Shaler

Nathaniel Southgate Shaler was an American paleontologist and geologist who wrote extensively on the theological and scientific implications of the theory of evolution, whose work is considered scientific racism.

Nathaniel Shaler was appointed director of the Kentucky Geological Survey in 1873, and devoted a part of each year until 1880 to that work.

Nathaniel Shaler was commissioner of agriculture for Massachusetts at different times, and was president of the Geological Society of America in 1895.

Nathaniel Shaler served two years as a Union officer in the American Civil War.

Early in his professional career, Nathaniel Shaler was broadly a creationist and anti-Darwinist.

When his own position at Harvard was secure, Nathaniel Shaler gradually accepted Darwinism in principle but viewed it through a neo-Lamarckian lens.

Nathaniel Shaler extended Charles Darwin's work on the importance of earthworm soil bioturbation to soil formation to other animals, such as ants.

Nathaniel Shaler was an apologist for slavery and an outspoken believer in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race.

Nathaniel Shaler published work describing the physical geography of different continents and linking these geologic settings to the intelligence and strength of human races that inhabited these spaces.

Nathaniel Shaler published scores of long and short treatises in his lifetime, with subjects ranging from topographical surveys to moral philosophy.

Nathaniel Shaler mentored many students, including William Morris Davis, who worked for him as a field assistant, and was later hired by Nathaniel Shaler to teach at Harvard.

Davis became a renowned geographer, and similar to Nathaniel Shaler, wrote about how different geographies produced more or less fit societies.

When Nathaniel Shaler passed, a fund was set up by alumni in his honor, which was specified to be used for field experiences, and these funds are still in use for student field trips today.

Nathaniel Shaler was a neighbor of businessman Gordon McKay, and convinced McKay to leave most of his enormous fortune to fund expansion of Harvard's science programs.