Patrick Rogers was a supporter of militant efforts to end British rule in Ireland and was forced to flee to avoid persecution.

During the year in which he held the professorship, he edited a monthly scientific magazine, The Messenger of Useful Knowledge, in which educational, literary, and political articles and selections from foreign journals were also published.

[2] On their suggestion, in 1831 or 1832 he went to England, where, with aid afforded him by his brother William, he studied chemistry in the laboratory of Edward Turner, and attended other scientific lectures in London, including those of De la Beche on geology.

Having received the degree of Master of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 1834, he was elected professor of geology and mineralogy in that institution in 1835, where he remained until his resignation in 1846.

On the organisation of the geological survey of the state of Pennsylvania in 1836, he was appointed geologist in charge, and engaged in active field work until 1841, when the appropriations were discontinued.

In 1842, he and his brother William, who was similarly occupied with a geological survey in Virginia (his reports were published in 1838 and 1841, and he wrote also on the connection between thermal springs and anticlinal axes and faults), brought before the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists their conclusions on the physical structure of the Appalachian chain, and on the elevation of great mountain chains.

The researches of H. D. Rogers were elaborated in his final report on Pennsylvania, in which he included a general account of the geology of the United States and of the coal fields of North America and Great Britain.

[7] The book, in two quarto volumes, contains 1682 pages, is illustrated by 778 woodcuts and diagrams in the text, 69 plates, and 18 folded sheets of sections, and was published by W. Blackwood & Sons (London and Edinburgh), and J.