Charles Sumner Slichter was a well-respected mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

 and physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

. Some of his contributions to the body of science came from hydrogeology

Hydrogeology

Hydrogeology is the area of geology that deals with the distribution and movement of groundwater in the soil and rocks of the Earth's crust, . The term geohydrology is often used interchangeably...

 in which he developed a method of quantifying the velocity of ground-water underflow in river valleys. This method employed ammonium chloride

Ammonium chloride

Ammonium chloride NH4Cl is an inorganic compound with the formula NH4Cl. It is a white crystalline salt that is highly soluble in water. Solutions of ammonium chloride are mildly acidic. Sal ammoniac is a name of natural, mineralogical form of ammonium chloride...

 that would be placed in an upstream, i.e., the upgradient, well

Water well

A water well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, boring or drilling to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn by an electric submersible pump, a trash pump, a vertical turbine pump, a handpump or a mechanical pump...

 and detected in three observation wells a short distance away, i.e., the downgradient.

Family

Slichter was the father of economist Sumner Slichter

Sumner Slichter

Sumner Huber Slichter was an American economist and the first Lamont University Professor at Harvard University. Slichter was considered by many to be the pre-eminent labor economist of the 1940s and 1950s.-Education:...

, the grandfather of physicist Charles Pence Slichter

Charles Pence Slichter

Charles Pence Slichter is an American physicist, best known for his work on nuclear magnetic resonance and superconductivity....

, and the great-grandfather of musician Jacob Slichter

Jacob Slichter

Jacob Slichter is an American musician. He graduated from Harvard with a degree in African American studies and history...

.

Books

• Galileo, 1642-1942 : an essay commemorating the tercentenary of Galileo : read before a joint meeting of the Wisconsin Chapter of Sigma Xi and the Dept. of Mathematics on November 17, 1942
• Science in a Tavern: Essays and Diversions on Science in the Making, University of Wisconsin Press
  University of Wisconsin Press
  The University of Wisconsin Press is a non-profit university press publishing peer-reviewed books and journals. It primarily publishes work by scholars from the global academic community but also serves the citizens of Wisconsin by publishing important books about Wisconsin, the Upper Midwest, and...
  
  , 1938
• Four-place logarithmic tables for rapid computation arranged by Charles S. Slichter, New York: Macmillan & Co., 1906, c1901
• The tidal and other problems (1909)
• Elementary mathematical analysis, a text book for first year college students (1914)
• Observations on the ground waters of Rio Grande Valley (1905)
• Field measurements of the rate of movement of underground waters (1905)
• The motions of underground waters (1902)
• The underflow in Arkansas Valley in western Kansas (1906)
• The underflow of the South Platte valley (1906)

• Theoretical investigation of the motion of ground waters (1899)