author
John Casper Branner
1850–1922
A pioneering American geologist, educator, and explorer, he helped identify Arkansas's bauxite deposits and later became Stanford University's second president. His career carried him from fieldwork in Brazil to the front ranks of American earth science.
1 Audiobook
A brief grammar of the Portuguese language with exercises and vocabularies
by John Casper Branner
About the author
Born in Tennessee in 1850, John Casper Branner built a career that mixed science, travel, and teaching. Early in life he worked in Brazil, an experience that shaped his lifelong interest in South American geology and the Portuguese language. He later studied at Cornell and earned a Ph.D. from Indiana University before taking on important academic and geological posts in the United States.
Branner is especially remembered for his work as Arkansas state geologist, where he is credited with discovering bauxite in 1887, a find that became important to the state's mining history. He taught at Indiana University and then joined the founding faculty of Stanford University as professor of geology, where he became known as a respected teacher and mentor.
At Stanford, he served first as vice president and then as president from 1913 to 1915. Alongside his university leadership, he remained active in geology and seismology, helping build the scientific study of earthquakes in the United States. He died in 1922, leaving behind a legacy in both higher education and the earth sciences.