Charles Henry Hitchcock

[2] His father was Edward Hitchcock (1793–1864) who was a professor of geology and natural theology and then president of Amherst College.

[3] In 1866 and 1867, Hitchcock studied at the Royal School of Mines in London, examined fossils in the British Museum, and visited glaciers in Switzerland.

[5] In connection with his survey of New Hampshire, he maintained, during the winter of 1870, a meteorological station on Mount Washington, the earliest high-mountain observatory in the United States.

He used the tetrahedral hypothesis which had been first published in 1875 by William Lowthian Green to explain the formation of the Earth's land masses.

[2] Hitchcock was a founder of the Geological Society of America, and in 1883 vice-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.