James B. Macelwane

America
1883—1956

James Macelwane was born near Sandusky Bay, Ohio, the second eldest in an Irish family of nine children. His father was a fisherman and farmer, his childhood spent helping his father with the nets. He joined the Jesuits in 1903, intending to be a missionary. To that end, he trained with German Jesuits, in order to learn a foreign language. He would end up being conversant in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Greek and Latin. Assigned to the Missouri Province, he took his first geology course in 1910 at St. Louis University, just as Father Odenbach began to organize the Jesuit Seismological Service throughout the US and Canada. Odenbach installed eighteen seismographs across the continent at Jesuit colleges, the data was sent to the International Central Station in Strassburg. Macelwane, still a student was asked to assist with setting up and monitoring the SLU station. When the seismograph malfunctioned, Macelwane and a friend took it apart and repaired it. Macelwane used the experience to publish his first paper, “The Physics of the Seismograph”.

Since the seismograph station was in the meterological observatory, he also became interested in meterology.  This provided the foundation for his later discovery, that microseisms, barely detectable shaking in the earth’s crust, were caused by storms at sea. Macelwane was ordained a priest in 1918, after obtaining an MA in science, and moved to the University of California to obtain his Ph.D under Professor Elmer E. Hall, the first man to measure vibrations in buildings. With Dr. Hall’s assistance, he established the first chain of seismographs in northern California and studied several California earthquakes. He received the first US doctorate in physics with a seismological dissertation and organized the first direction to the University of California’s graduate studies in seismology. Returning to St. Louis University, he set up the same program there. By 1944, he had established St. Louis University’s Institute of Technology and became its first Dean. The purpose of the program was, in part, to assist in the search for oil deposits. In this, it was very successful.

Shortly after, he re-built the Jesuit study of this science into the Jesuit Seismological Association, with the central research center in St. Louis. He also helped organize the Eastern Section of the Seismological Society of America. During this time, he also directed several doctoral candidates in ground-breaking research.

In honor of his work, James Macelwane was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1944, received the Bowie Medal of the American Geophysical Union in 1948, and the Mendel Medal of Villanova University in 1955. In addition, he received honorary doctoral degrees from Saint Norbert’s College, Washington University, John Carroll University, and Marquette University. He served on Committees of Education of both the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers (AIME). Both organizations honored him with their highest awards, the SEG with an honorary life membership and the AIME with the Jackling Lecturer award.  Fr. Macelwane is  the namesake of the the Macelwane Fellowship awarded by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and also of the James B. Macelwane Medal awarded annually by the American Geophysical Union(AGU) The medal is regarded as the highest honor for young scientists in the field of Geological and Planetary Sciences. The geological division of the SLU Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences is housed in Macelwane Hall.