Henry Carvill Lewis

Who was Henry Carvill Lewis?

Henry Carvill Lewis was an American geologist and mineralogist. Lewis was born in Philadelphia and educated at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Masters of Arts Degree in 1876 and became attached to the Geological Survey of Pennsylvania in 1879. He served for three years as a volunteer member, and during this term he became greatly interested in the study of glacial phenomena. In 1880 he was chosen professor of mineralogy in the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, and in 1833 he was appointed to the chair of geology in Haverford College, Pennsylvania.

During the winters of 1885 to 1887 he studied petrology under HF Rosenbusch at Heidelberg, and during the summers he investigated the glacial geology of northern Europe and the British Isles. His observations in North America, where he had studied under Professor G.F. Wright, Professor T.C. Chamberlin and Warren Upham, had demonstrated the former extension of land-ice, and the existence of great terminal moraines.

In 1884 his Report on the Terminal Moraine in Pennsylvania and Western New York was published: a work containing much information on the limits of the North American ice-sheet.