Loring Woart Bailey

Who was Loring Woart Bailey?

Loring Woart Bailey was an educator, geologist, botanist, and author. He was born at West Point, New York, the son of a professor at the academy.

Loring Woart Bailey was introduced to scientific circles by his father, first professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology at the United States Military Academy in West Point. Eminent American and European scientists visited their home and as a youth he joined his father and brothers in botanical and geological field observations. He was educated at schools in Maryland and Rhode Island before entering Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1855. There he studied under the geologist Louis Agassiz, the botanist Asa Gray, and the chemist Josiah Parsons Cooke. His AB degree in 1859 was followed by a period of further study in chemistry at Brown University in Providence, R.I. He then returned to Harvard, where he served as assistant to Cooke, who in 1861 recommended him, at the age of 21, for the post of professor of chemistry and natural science at the University of New Brunswick. He would receive his MA from Harvard the following year.

In 1863 and 1864, accompanied by G.F. Matthew and C.F. Hartt, he undertook mineralogical and geological surveys of New Brunswick. They discovered the Silurian age of the rock formations, not Precambrian as had been believed, and laid the foundations for elucidating the entire geological region, including New England. From 1868 Bailey contributed summer fieldwork to the Geological Survey of Canada. He became a Royal Society of Canada charter member in 1882.