Department of Geology and Mineralogy records

Instruction in the natural sciences began at the University in 1870 with a course in geography offered through the Preparatory Department. Following the passage of an act by the state legislature on March 1, 1872 that created the Minnesota Geological and Natural History Survey under the authority of the Board of Regents, Newton Horace Winchell was hired to execute the survey as the State Geologist and serve as a professor of geology, botany, and zoology.

In 1874, the Department of Geology and Mineralogy was officially established as the fifth department in the College of Science, Literature and the Arts. Winchell was named department chair. He continued to teach until 1878, when he was relieved of his duties in instruction to focus all of his efforts on the survey.

In 1890, the department moved from the main University building (known today as Old Main) to Pillsbury Hall.

In 1911, the Minnesota Geological Survey was established within the department (a separate entity from the original 1872 survey), and largely directed the nature of the department’s work by funding a large portion of faculty and graduate research, which focused on the fields of petrology, mineralogy, and economic geology.

In subsequent years, the department established the Rock Analysis Laboratory, which operated from 1929 to 1959, the Limnological Research Center (opened in 1959), the Organic Geochemistry Laboratory (established in 1955), and the Institute for Rock Magnetism (opened in 1990).

The Department of Geology and Mineralogy was renamed the Department of Geology and Geophysics in 1962 and was re-organized administratively in the School of Earth Science in the Institute of Technology. In 2010, The Institute of Technology became the College of Science and Engineering. In 2011, the Department of Geology and Geophysics was renamed Department of Earth Sciences. Today the department is part of the Newton Horace Winchell School of Earth Sciences, which was established in 1988.