Memorial to Alonzo Wallace Quinn 1899-1977
Memorial to Alonzo Wallace Quinn 1899-1977 MARLAND P. BILLINGS Department o f Geological Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 Alonzo Wallace Quinn, Professor of Geology, Emeritus, at Brown University, died on April 8, 1977, in Providence, Rhode Island, in his seventy-eighth year. Lon’s chief geological interests included the petrology, age, and origin of the rocks of the northern Appalachian Mountains, especially the late Paleozoic intrusives of Rhode Island, the pre-Pennsylvanian igneous and metamorphic rocks of southern New England, and the plutonic rocks of New Hampshire. Of his many geological accomplishments, the greatest was the completion of the map of the bedrock geology of Rhode Island, published in Bulletin 1295 of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1971, on a scale of 1:125,000. Geologic maps are the basic material for under standing the geology of the upper part of the crust. A formal mapping program in Rhode Island began in 1944, when the state arranged a cooperative program with the U.S. Geological Survey. Excellent topographic sheets, published as IV i' quadrangles on scales of one inch to 2,640 or 2,000 feet were available as base maps. Most of the geologic mapping was done by university personnel working as part-time employees of the Survey. As Lon pointed out in Bulletin 1295, Rhode Island is the only state for which the bedrock geological map is based on maps prepared on a scale of 1:31,680 or 1:24,000. He modestly failed to mention that he personally—sometimes with an associ ate—mapped 35% of the state.
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