author
J. M. Woodman
A 19th-century California minister, teacher, and speculative science writer, this little-known author brought religion, natural science, and big cosmic questions together in his books. His work has a distinctly independent spirit, shaped as much by the classroom and pulpit as by the scientific debates of his day.
1 Audiobook
The Neptunian, or Water Theory of Creation
by J. M. Woodman
About the author
J. M. Woodman was an American clergyman, educator, and author active in California in the 19th century. Contemporary and archival sources connect him with Chico Academy, where he was described as a professor of natural science, and with early Congregational ministry work in Oroville before he became widely known in Chico as a teacher.
His published works include The Song of Cosmology (1880) and The Neptunian, or Water Theory of Creation (1888). In these books, he tried to bring scientific inquiry, biblical interpretation, and grand theories of creation into a single frame, giving his writing an unusual blend of devotion, argument, and cosmic ambition.
Later newspaper accounts remembered him and his wife as longtime educators in Chico, noting that they had arrived there in 1863, and a 1903 report marked the close of his career at his death in San Leandro. Reliable biographical detail about his early life appears to be limited, but the surviving record shows a figure who left his strongest mark as a teacher, preacher, and earnest independent thinker.