Thomas Jaggar
Encyclopedia
Thomas Augustus Jaggar, Jr. (January 24, 1871 – January 17, 1953) was an American volcanologist. He founded the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory
and directed it from 1912 to 1940.
in 1871, son of Episcopal Bishop of Southern Ohio
Augustus Jaggar.
In 1897, he received his Ph.D.
in geology
from Harvard University
. He spent the next few years as a scientist in the laboratory. He felt strongly that experimentation was the key to understanding earth science
. Jaggar constructed water flumes bedded by sand and gravel in order to understand stream erosion and melted rocks in furnaces to study the behavior of magma
s.
As he matured as a scientist, he began to feel the increasing need for field experimentation. Jaggar wrote at this time,
Thus Jaggar began a decade-long period of exploration to witness and analyze first-hand natural geologic processes.
In 1902, he was one of the scientists that the United States
sent to investigate the volcanic disasters at Soufrière
and Mont Pelée. With the help of the U.S. Navy and the National Geographic Society
, Jaggar landed on the steaming shores of Martinique
some 13 days after the disaster. The same year, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
.
In his autobiography published in 1956, Jaggar recounts,
In 1906 he became head of Massachusetts Institute of Technology
's department of geology. The next 10 years of Jaggar's life brought expeditions to the scenes of great earthquakes and eruptions in Italy
, the Aleutians, Central America
, and Japan
. With each trip, Jaggar became increasingly concerned that his field studies were but brief, inadequate snapshots of long-term, dynamic, earth processes. In 1908, an earthquake
killed 125,000 people near Mt. Etna in Italy. With this disaster, Jaggar declared that "something must be done" to support systematic, ongoing studies of volcanic and seismic activity. He traveled to Hawaii
in 1909 at his own expense, and determined that Kilauea
was to be the home of the first American volcano observatory. He would work on that project the rest of his life.
He married co-worker Isabel Maydwell in 1917.
He moved to Honolulu in 1940 but remained active at the University of Hawaii
. He died in Honolulu on January 17, 1953.
a prominent Honolulu lawyer and businessman. Thurston, like Jaggar, believed that Kilauea was a prime site for a permanent volcano observatory and inquired of Jaggar, "Is it then a question of money?". Within a year of this conversation, Thurston and other businessmen raised financial backing for the Hawaii Volcano Research Association. A small observing station was set up on the rim of Halemaumau crater (a pit crater
within Kilauea's summit caldera
). In 1912, support was forthcoming from an MIT alumnus and construction of the new Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) began. The first instruments were in a cellar called the Whitney (for the donor) vault adjacent to the Volcano House
Hotel.
During his early years as Director, Jaggar struggled after private endowments with the hope of eventually securing sponsorship by the Federal Government. In 1919, Jaggar convinced the National Weather Service
to fund HVO. The United States Geological Survey
took over its operation in 1924, with the exception of a brief hiatus during the Great Depression
when HVO was run by the National Park Service
.
Jaggar remained Director of HVO until 1940. The Thomas A. Jaggar Museum in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
is named for him. It is located at the main observatory building.
Hawaiian Volcano Observatory
The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory is a volcano observatory located at Uwekahuna Bluff on the rim of Kīlauea Caldera on the Island of Hawaii. The observatory monitors four active Hawaiian volcanoes: Kīlauea, Mauna Loa, Hualālai, and Haleakalā...
and directed it from 1912 to 1940.
Biography
He was born in Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
in 1871, son of Episcopal Bishop of Southern Ohio
Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio
The Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio is the diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America with jurisdiction over southern Ohio and The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. It is in Province 5 and its cathedral, Christ Church Cathedral, is in Cincinnati as are the office of the...
Augustus Jaggar.
In 1897, he received his Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
in geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. He spent the next few years as a scientist in the laboratory. He felt strongly that experimentation was the key to understanding earth science
Earth science
Earth science is an all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth. It is arguably a special case in planetary science, the Earth being the only known life-bearing planet. There are both reductionist and holistic approaches to Earth sciences...
. Jaggar constructed water flumes bedded by sand and gravel in order to understand stream erosion and melted rocks in furnaces to study the behavior of magma
Magma
Magma is a mixture of molten rock, volatiles and solids that is found beneath the surface of the Earth, and is expected to exist on other terrestrial planets. Besides molten rock, magma may also contain suspended crystals and dissolved gas and sometimes also gas bubbles. Magma often collects in...
s.
As he matured as a scientist, he began to feel the increasing need for field experimentation. Jaggar wrote at this time,
"Whereas small scale experiments in the laboratory helped me to think about the details of nature...there remained the need to measure nature itself."
Thus Jaggar began a decade-long period of exploration to witness and analyze first-hand natural geologic processes.
In 1902, he was one of the scientists that the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
sent to investigate the volcanic disasters at Soufrière
Soufrière (volcano)
La Soufrière [The Sulfurer] or Soufrière Saint Vincent is an active volcano on the island of Saint Vincent in the Windward Islands of the Caribbean.- Geography and structure :...
and Mont Pelée. With the help of the U.S. Navy and the National Geographic Society
National Geographic Society
The National Geographic Society , headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical...
, Jaggar landed on the steaming shores of Martinique
Martinique
Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...
some 13 days after the disaster. The same year, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
.
In his autobiography published in 1956, Jaggar recounts,
"It was hard to distinguish where the streets had been. Everything was buried under fallen walls of cobblestone and pink plaster and tiles, including 20,000 bodies....As I look back on the Martinique experience I know what a crucial point in my life it was....I realized that the killing of thousands of persons by subterranean machinery totally unknown to geologists...was worthy of a life work."
In 1906 he became head of Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
's department of geology. The next 10 years of Jaggar's life brought expeditions to the scenes of great earthquakes and eruptions in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, the Aleutians, Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
, and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. With each trip, Jaggar became increasingly concerned that his field studies were but brief, inadequate snapshots of long-term, dynamic, earth processes. In 1908, an earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
killed 125,000 people near Mt. Etna in Italy. With this disaster, Jaggar declared that "something must be done" to support systematic, ongoing studies of volcanic and seismic activity. He traveled to Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
in 1909 at his own expense, and determined that Kilauea
Kilauea
Kīlauea is a volcano in the Hawaiian Islands, and one of five shield volcanoes that together form the island of Hawaii. Kīlauea means "spewing" or "much spreading" in the Hawaiian language, referring to its frequent outpouring of lava. The Puu Ōō cone has been continuously erupting in the eastern...
was to be the home of the first American volcano observatory. He would work on that project the rest of his life.
He married co-worker Isabel Maydwell in 1917.
He moved to Honolulu in 1940 but remained active at the University of Hawaii
University of Hawaii
The University of Hawaii System, formally the University of Hawaii and popularly known as UH, is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees through three university campuses, seven community college campuses, an employment...
. He died in Honolulu on January 17, 1953.
Hawaiian Volcano Observatory
After a lecture on his Martinique expedition in Honolulu, Jaggar was approached by Lorrin A. ThurstonLorrin A. Thurston
Lorrin Andrews Thurston was a lawyer, politician, and businessman born and raised in the Kingdom of Hawaii. The grandson of two of the first Christian missionaries to Hawaii, Thurston played a prominent role in the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom that replaced Queen Liliuokalani with the...
a prominent Honolulu lawyer and businessman. Thurston, like Jaggar, believed that Kilauea was a prime site for a permanent volcano observatory and inquired of Jaggar, "Is it then a question of money?". Within a year of this conversation, Thurston and other businessmen raised financial backing for the Hawaii Volcano Research Association. A small observing station was set up on the rim of Halemaumau crater (a pit crater
Pit crater
A pit crater is a depression formed by a sinking of the ground surface lying above a void or empty chamber, rather than by the eruption of a volcano or lava vent. It is often found in chains or troughs. Several craters may merge into a linear alignment...
within Kilauea's summit caldera
Caldera
A caldera is a cauldron-like volcanic feature usually formed by the collapse of land following a volcanic eruption, such as the one at Yellowstone National Park in the US. They are sometimes confused with volcanic craters...
). In 1912, support was forthcoming from an MIT alumnus and construction of the new Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) began. The first instruments were in a cellar called the Whitney (for the donor) vault adjacent to the Volcano House
Volcano House
Volcano House is the name of a series of historic hotels built at the edge of the Kīlauea volcano, within the grounds of Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park on the Island of Hawai'i. The original 1877 building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and now houses the Volcano Art Center...
Hotel.
During his early years as Director, Jaggar struggled after private endowments with the hope of eventually securing sponsorship by the Federal Government. In 1919, Jaggar convinced the National Weather Service
National Weather Service
The National Weather Service , once known as the Weather Bureau, is one of the six scientific agencies that make up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States government...
to fund HVO. The United States Geological Survey
United States Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The organization has four major science disciplines, concerning biology,...
took over its operation in 1924, with the exception of a brief hiatus during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
when HVO was run by the National Park Service
National Park Service
The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...
.
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, established in 1916, is a United States National Park located in the U.S. State of Hawaii on the island of Hawaii. It encompasses two active volcanoes: Kīlauea, one of the world's most active volcanoes, and Mauna Loa, the world's most massive volcano...
is named for him. It is located at the main observatory building.