WALCOTT, CHARLES DOOLITTLE (1850-1927) , American palaeontologist, born in New York Mills, N.Y., Mar. 35, 185o. To his education in the public schools and Utica Academy he added special reading and study of his own in geology, and in 1876 became an assistant to James Hall, New York State geolo gist and eminent palaeontologist. Three years later he joined the newly organized U.S. Geological Survey as assistant geologist. He became director of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1894 and in the next few years reorganized it and greatly extended its useful ness. During the 13 years of his control the Reclamation Service, the Forestry Service and the Bureau of Mines were all founded as branches of the Geological Survey, Walcott drawing up the legislative enactments which created the first two, and shaping the organization of all of them. He was appointed secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1907 in which capacity he served 20 years (1907-27), directing its researches and broadening its scope. He secured the addition of the Freer and National art gal leries as part of the greater institution. He was one of the founders of the Carnegie Institute, its first secretary and administrative officer, 1902-05, and a member of the executive committee until his death. He was also active in the organization of the Federal
Research Council, serving afterwards as a member of the execu tive committee. He was responsible for the establishment of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and was its chair man until his death.
His chief contribution to science lies in his full description and interpretation of the early Cambrian and Algonkian fauna. With Arnold Hague he surveyed and worked out the great Paleozoic region of central Nevada. He examined the Cambrian formation of the Appalachian belt and eastward, and began a determination of the Cambrian and pre-Cambrian rocks of the Western States. Almost every summer after 1907 he devoted to unearthing the Cambrian succession in the Rocky Mountains of Canada, where it is unusually complete. In 1910 he discovered the remarkable Burgess deposit of Cambrian fossils in British Columbia, the finest invertebrate fossil field yet known.
He published a series of 38 octavo volumes on Cambrian geology and palaeontology and two volumes on Cambrian Brachiopoda (5952), besides about 30o scientific papers. See Smithsonian Miscellaneous Col lections, vol. 8o (1928) for complete bibliography and memoir.