Roland Duer Irving (April 27, 1847 – May 30, 1888)[1] was an American geologist.
From 1880 to 1882 he was one of the United States census experts,[2] and in 1882 was made geologist in charge of the Lake Superior division of the United States Geological Survey.
His specialty was the micro-petrography of the fragmental rocks and crystalline schists, and pre-Cambrian stratigraphy and the genesis of some of the so-called crystalline rocks.
[4] Irving was eulogized by United States Geological Survey Director John Wesley Powell as part of the 1889 annual report to the Secretary of the Interior.
[5] He was the father of John Duer Irving, another noted geologist and editor of the journal Economic Geology from 1905 to 1918.