Alfred Hulse Brooks
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Through Germany, Paris and Topography
Early life
Alfred Hulse Brooks was born on July 18, 1871, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Hannah (née Hulse) and Thomas Benton Brooks. He was educated at a private school in Newburgh, New York. He graduated from Harvard University in 1894. After his graduation, he also studied in Germany and Paris.
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Career
In 1898, the federal government announced a systematic topographic and geologic survey of Alaska that would include renewed exploration of what became known as the Brooks Range. Alfred Hulse Brooks, the new assistant geologist and head of the Alaskan branch of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), called the project "far more important than any previously done," due in large part because it "furnished the first clue to the geography and geology of the part of Alaska north of the Yukon Basin." Between 1899 and 1911, six major reconnaissance expeditions traversed the mountain range, mapping its topography and geology and defining the patterns of economic geology so important to prospectors and miners. He was appointed geological curator of Alaskan mineral resources 1902.
Every year from 1904 to 1916 and from 1919 to 1923, Brooks wrote summaries of Alaska's mineral industries. The missed years, during World War I, were those that he spent in France as chief geologist for the American Expeditionary Force in France.
Personal life
Brooks married. He had two children, Mary and Benton.
Brooks had a stroke at his desk at the Interior Department. He died the following morning, November 22, 1924, at a hospital in Washington, D.C. Brooks was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
Honors
- 1913 - Received the Charles P. Daly Medal of the American Geographical Society.
- 1913 - Received the Malte-Brun gold medal of the Geographical Society of Paris, France.
- 1925 - The Brooks Range, a mountain range that stretches from west to east across northern Alaska and into Canada's Yukon Territory was named for Mr. Brooks.
- Mount Brooks and the Brooks Glacier in Denali National Park are named for him.
- The Brooks Building at the University of Alaska Fairbanks is named for him. The building housed the university's mining engineering and related programs for several decades, and currently houses their programs and services for Alaska Native students.
- The mineral Hulsite is named for Mr. Brooks.
- Brooks Falls and Brooks Lake in Katmai National Park and Preserve are named for him.