J. Hoover Mackin
| Joseph Hoover Mackin | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 16, 1905 Oswego, New York |
| Died | 12 August 1968 (aged 62) |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | J. Hoover Mackin |
| Alma mater |
New York University University of Texas at Austin |
| Occupation | geologist |
| Parent(s) | William David Mackin (Father) Catherine Hoover Mackin (Mother) |
Joseph Hoover Mackin (November 16, 1905 – August 12, 1968) was an American geologist. As a tribute to him, a huge plateau in Antarctica bears the name Mackin Table and a large lunar crater named Mackin (originally named Mackin-Apollo) marks the location of the Apollo 17 landing site.
Mackin was born November 16, 1905, in Oswego, New York, the youngest of seven children of William David Mackin and Catherine Hoover Mackin. Hoover spent two years immobilized in a cast after being stricken with poliomyelitis at the age of four, but outgrew the effects of his childhood illness and eventually played football both at Oswego High School and Oswego Normal School. After graduation in 1924, Mackin entered New York University. Initially intending to become a journalist, he switched his major to geology after hearing lectures by Professor George I. Finley.
He received the B.S. degree in geology from NYU in 1930 and then entered the graduate school of Columbia University, where he was granted an M.A. degree in 1932. Mackin accepted an appointment as an instructor at the University of Washington and eventually received a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1936. His teaching career would span thirty-four years—twenty-eight years at Washington and six years as Farish Professor of Geology at the University of Texas at Austin.
While Mackin considered himself a geomorphologist, his bibliography reveals far greater scope to his actual research activities. In his doctoral thesis on the origin of surface features of the Big Horn Basin in Wyoming, he introduced the concept of lateral plantation by a stream essentially at grade, producing gravel-mantled terraces as the stream gradually deepens its valley, as opposed to formation of terraces by stream dissection of earlier alluvial plains. Mackin's further analysis led to publication in 1948 of the classic paper, Concept of the Graded River, which has been cited over 700 times. In this paper Mackin refers to the rapidity with which a graded stream responds to artificial changes - a warning of profound importance to stream engineers against altering natural equilibrium by diversion or damming or channel-improvements.
One of Mackin's earliest papers, written with the famous British geologist E. B. Bailey, dealt with the complex folding in the Pennsylvania Piedmont area of the Pennsylvania Regions and the use of b-lineation in structural analysis. This paper was perhaps the first attempt to apply the concepts of recumbent folding and nappe structure to geologic interpretation of the piedmont. Since then, these concepts have been shown to be widely applicable. A by-product of the initial study was Mackin's 1950 paper on the "down structure" method of viewing and interpreting geologic maps.
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