GUYOT, ARNOLD HENRY (1807-1884), Swiss-Ameri can geologist and geographer, was born at Boudevilliers, near Neu chatel, Switzerland, on Sept. 28, 1807. Before coming to the United States in 1848, he studied at the college of Neuchatel and in Germany, where he began a lifelong friendship with Louis Agassiz. He was professor of geology and physical geography at Princeton from 1854 until his death on Feb. 8, 1884. He was ranked high as a geologist and meteorologist. His extensive meteorological ob servations in America led to the establishment of the U.S. weather bureau, and his Meteorological and Physical Tables (1852, revised edition 1884) were long standard. His text books and wall maps aided in popularizing and extending geological study in America.
As early as 1838 he undertook, at Agassiz's suggestion, the study of glaciers, from which he announced for the first time certain important observations relating to glacial motion and structure. Among other things he noted the more rapid flow of the centre than of the sides, and the more rapid flow of the top than of the bottom of glaciers; described the laminated or "ribboned" structure of the glacial ice, and ascribed the movement of glaciers to a gradual molecular displacement rather than to a sliding of the ice mass as held by de Saussure. He subsequently collected important data concerning erratic boulders.
His principal publications, in addition to text books, were: Earth and Man, Lectures on Comparative Physical Geography in its Relation to the History of Mankind (translated by Professor C. C. Felton, 1849) ; A Memoir of Louis Agassiz (1883) ; and Creation, or the Bibli cal Cosmogony in the Light of Modern Science (1884) • See James D. Dana's "Memoir" in the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Science, vol. ii. (Washington, 1886) .