J.W. Spencer (1851-1921): His Life in Missouri and Georgia, and Work on Proglacial Lakes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In 1882, Spencer left Canada to become Professor of Geology and Mineralogy, and Director of the Natural History Museum at the State University of Missouri. His first task was to design and equip the new museum, part of a planned extension of the main university building. The museum was completed in 1884, but funding for specimens and furnishing was withheld as feuding between the administration and the State increased. In 1886, Spencer visited Europe, making observations in Norway which strengthened his belief that glaciers were ineffective agents of erosion. Spencer was forced to resign in 1887: he devoted that summer to intensive fieldwork in the Great Lakes region, tracing proglacial lake beaches. He was appointed Professor of Geology at the State University of Georgia in Athens in 1888 and devoted that summer to further fieldwork on the proglacial beaches. The summer of 1889 was spent in geological surveys for a new railroad in Georgia and Alabama, and in 1890 Spencer gave up his position as Professor to become State Geologist of Georgia. This position ended in 1893, because Spencer had mapped mainly Paleozoic rocks in the northwest part of the State, and was intolerant of demands that he yield to political pressures and spend more time on practical matters, including gold deposits. His two seasons of fieldwork (in 1887 and 1888) were the main basis for the numerous papers that he subsequently published that named proglacial lakes (e.g., Iroquois, Algonquin), described their post-glacial deformation, and discussed their origin. Spencer did not accept that the Great Lakes region was ever covered by thick ice sheets: he believed the proglacial lakes formed at sea level, and were not the result of ice-dams. SOMMAIRE En 1882, Spencer a quitte le Canada pour devenir professeur de geologie et de mineralogie, et directeur du Musee d'histoire naturelle de l'Universite d'Etat du Missouri. Son premier mandat a ete de concevoir et equiper le nouveau musee, lequel devait etre un prolongement de l'edifice principal. La construction du musee a ete completee en 1884, mais les fonds pour l'achat de l'ameublement et de specimens n'ont pas ete debloques pour cause de mesentente croissante entre l'Etat et la direction. En 1886 Spencer a voyage en Europe et les observations qu'il a faites en Norvege ont renforce sa conviction que les glaciers n'etaient pas des agents d'erosion efficaces. En 1887, Spencer a ete force de demissionner : il a consacre cet ete la a d'intensifs travaux de terrain dans la region des Grands Lacs, relevant le trace des plages proglaciaires. En 1888, il a ete embauche comme professeur de geologie a l'Universite d'Etat de Georgie a Athens, et il a consacre son ete a la poursuite de ses travaux sur les plages proglaciaires. Durant l'ete de 1889, il a realise des leves geologiques en rapport avec la construction d'une nouvelle voie ferree en Georgie et en Alabama. En 1990, ila quitte son poste de professeur pour devenir geologue au service de l'Etat de Georgie. A ce poste, Spencer s'est surtout consacre a la cartographie des roches paleozoiques du nord-ouest de l'Etat, mais il a du quitter ce poste parce qu'il refusait de ceder aux pressions politiques voulant qu'il consacre plus de temps a des considerations plus pratiques, tel les gisements auriferes. Les informations recueillies lors de ses deux saisons de travaux de terrain (1887 et 1888) ont constitue la reference principale de nombreuses publications qui sont a l'origine des noms donnes aux lacs proglaciaires (Iroquois, Algonquin par ex.), de descriptions de leurs deformations post-glaciaires, et de discussions sur leur origine. Spencer n'acceptait pas l'idee que la region des Grands Lacs ait deja ete recouverte d'epaisses lentilles de glace : il croyait que les lacs proglaciaires avaient ete formes au niveau de la mer et qu'ils n'etaient pas le resultat d'un effet de barrage cree par les glaciers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".