A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes the Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, although backgrounds in physics, chemistry, biology, and other sciences are also useful. Field work is an important component of geology, although many subdisciplines incorporate laboratory work.
Geologists work in the energy and mining sectors searching for natural resources such as petroleum, natural gas, and precious metals. They are also in the forefront of preventing and mitigating damage from natural hazards and disasters such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis and landslides. Their studies are used to warn the general public of the occurrence of these events. Geologists are also important contributors to climate change discussions.
History

James Hutton is often viewed as the first modern geologist.[1] In 1785 he presented a paper entitled Theory of the Earth to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In his paper, he explained his theory that the Earth must be much older than had previously been supposed to allow enough time for mountains to be eroded and for sediments to form new rocks at the bottom of the sea, which in turn were raised up to become dry land. Hutton published a two-volume version of his ideas in 1795 (, ).
Followers of Hutton were known as Plutonists because they believed that some rocks were formed by vulcanism, which is the deposition of lava from volcanoes, as opposed to the Neptunists, led by Abraham Werner, who believed that all rocks had settled out of a large ocean whose level gradually dropped over time.

The first geological map of the United States was produced in 1809 by William Maclure.[2][3] In 1807, Maclure commenced the self-imposed task of making a geological survey of the United States. Almost every state in the Union was traversed and mapped by him; the Allegheny Mountains being crossed and recrossed some 50 times.[4] The results of his unaided labors were submitted to the American Philosophical Society in a memoir entitled Observations on the Geology of the United States explanatory of a Geological Map, and published in the Society's Transactions, together with the nation's first geological map.[5] This antedates William Smith's geological map of England by six years, although it was constructed using a different classification of rocks.
Sir Charles Lyell first published his famous book, Principles of Geology,[6] in 1830. This book, which influenced the thought of Charles Darwin, successfully promoted the doctrine of uniformitarianism. This theory states that slow geological processes have occurred throughout the Earth's history and are still occurring today. In contrast, catastrophism is the theory that Earth's features formed in single, catastrophic events and remained unchanged thereafter. Though Hutton believed in uniformitarianism, the idea was not widely accepted at the time.
Training / Schooling

For an aspiring geologist, training typically includes significant coursework in physics, mathematics, and chemistry, in addition to classes offered through the geology department; historical and physical geology, igneous and metamorphic petrology and petrography, hydrogeology, sedimentology, stratigraphy, mineralogy, palaeontology, physical geography and structural geology are among the many required areas of study.  Most geologists also need skills in GIS and other mapping techniques.  Geology students often spend portions of the year, especially the summer though sometimes during a January term, living and working under field conditions with faculty members (often referred to as "field camp"). Many non-geologists often take geology courses or have expertise in geology that they find valuable to their fields; this is common in the fields of geography, engineering, chemistry, urban planning, environmental studies, among others.
Areas of specialization

Geologists may concentrate their studies or research in one or more of the following disciplines:
Economic geology: the study of ore genesis, and the mechanisms of ore creation, geostatistics.
Engineering geology: application of the geologic sciences to engineering practice for the purpose of assuring that the geologic factors affecting the location, design, construction, operation and maintenance of engineering works are recognized and adequately provided for;
Geophysics: the applied branch deals with the application of physical methods such as gravity, seismicity, electricity, magnetic properties to study the earth.
Geochemistry: the applied branch deals with the study of the chemical makeup and behaviour of rocks, and the study of the behaviour of their minerals.
Geochronology: the study of isotope geology specifically toward determining the date within the past of rock formation, metamorphism, mineralization and geological events (notably, meteorite impacts).
Geomorphology: the study of landforms and the processes that create them
Hydrogeology: the study of the origin, occurrence and movement of groundwater water in a subsurface geological system.
Igneous petrology: the study of igneous processes such as igneous differentiation, fractional crystallization, intrusive and volcanological phenomena.
Isotope geology: the case of the isotopic composition of rocks to determine the processes of rock and planetary formation.
Metamorphic petrology: the study of the effects of metamorphism on minerals and rocks.
Marine geology: the study of the seafloor; involves geophysical, geochemical, sedimentological and paleontological investigations of the ocean floor and coastal margins. Marine geology has strong ties to physical oceanography and plate tectonics.
Palaeoclimatology: the application of geological science to determine the climatic conditions present in the Earth's atmosphere within the Earth's history.
Palaeontology: the classification and taxonomy of fossils within the geological record and the construction of a palaeontological history of the Earth.
Pedology: the study of soil, soil formation, and regolith formation.
Petroleum geology: the study of sedimentary basins applied to the search for hydrocarbons (oil exploration).
Planetary geology: the study of geology as it relates to other celestial bodies, namely planets and their moons. This includes the subdiscipline of lunar geology, selenology, and martian geology, areology.
Sedimentology: the study of sedimentary rocks, strata, formations, eustasy and the processes of modern-day sedimentary and erosive systems.
Seismology: The study of earthquakes.
Structural geology: the study of folds, faults, foliation and rock microstructure to determine the deformational history of rocks and regions.
Volcanology: the study of volcanoes, their eruptions, lavas, magma processes and hazards.
Employment

Professional geologists work for a wide range of government agencies, private firms, and non-profit and academic institutions. They are usually hired on a contract basis or hold permanent positions within private firms or official agencies (such as the United States Geologic Survey).
Local, state, and national governments hire geologists to work on geological projects that are of interest to the public community. The investigation of a country's natural resources is often a key role when working for government institutions; the work of the geologist in this field can be made publicly available to help the community make more informed decisions related to the exploitation of resources, management of the environment and the safety of critical infrastructure - all of which is expected to bring greater wellbeing to the country.[7] This 'wellbeing' is often in the form of greater tax revenues from new or extended mining projects or through better infrastructure and/or natural disaster planning.

An engineering geologist is employed to investigate geologic hazards and geologic constraints for the planning, design and construction of public and private engineering projects, forensic and post-mortem studies, and environmental impact analysis. Exploration geologists use all aspects of geology and geophysics to locate and study natural resources. In many countries or U.S. states without specialized environmental remediation licensure programs, the environmental remediation field is often dominated by professional geologists, particularly hydrogeologists, with professional concentrations in this aspect of the field. Petroleum and mining companies use mudloggers, and large-scale land developers use the skills of geologists and engineering geologists to help them locate oil and minerals, adapt to local features such as karst topography or earthquake risk, and comply with environmental regulations.
Geologists in academia usually hold an advanced degree in a specialized area within their geological discipline and are employed by universities.
Professional designation

In Canada, National Instrument 43-101 requires reports containing estimates of mineral resources and reserves to be prepared by, or under the supervision of, a Qualified Person (QP) who has at least five years of experience with the reported minerals and is a member of a professional association.  The QP accepts personal liability for the professional quality of the report and underlying work.[8]
The rules and guidelines codified in National Instrument 43-101 were introduced after a scandal in 1997 where Bre-X geologists salted drill core samples at a gold exploration property in Busang, Indonesia. The falsified drilling results misled Bre-X investors and upon discovery of the fraud, the company collapsed in the largest gold mining scam in history.[9]
See also
List of geologists
Petroleum geologist


John Dollard (29 August 1900 – 8 October 1980) was an American psychologist and social scientist best known for his studies on race relations in America and the frustration-aggression hypothesis he proposed with Neal E. Miller and others.
Life and Education
Dollard was born in Menasha, Wisconsin in 1900. He studied commerce and English at the University of Wisconsin and received his B.A. in 1922. He then earned his Ph.D in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1931. Dollard also studied psychoanalysis at the Berlin Institute from 1931-1932.[1][2] He later returned to the states and taught anthropology at Yale University before he became a research associate at the new Institute of Human Relations. With Neal E. Miller, a fellow researcher at the Institute of Human Relations, Dollard also served as a consultant to the Morale Services Division of the U.S. Department of War. He continued to teach at Yale though and later became a professor of psychology in 1952.  Dollard retired from Yale in 1969, becoming professor emeritus, until his death in 1980 in New Haven, Connecticut.[3]
Career
Dollard's personal research was focused on the sociological issues of race relations and social class, as well as exploring biographical analyses, suggesting what should be included in biographical materials to permit sound psychological studies, researching various topics related to sociology and culture, and psychoanalysis. According to his research, much can be predicted without knowing anything about the individual by simply having knowledge of the culture into which the person is born. He realized that sociological variables, such as social class and culture, influence a person's particular learning experiences. Unlike most psychoanalysts at the time, Dollard recognized the importance of considering actual human social conditions rather than just abstract psychological principles constructed in a laboratory setting.[4] These ideas and practices led him to write one of his most influential works, Caste and Class in a Southern Town, the now classic sociological study of race relations in the Deep South. From 1941 to 1945 he also studied fear and morale in modern warfare, which culminated in several reports, including Fear and Courage under Battle Conditions (1943) and "Fear in Battle" (The Infantry Journal, 1944).[5]
However, Dollard is likely best known within the psychological community as a member of the distinguished group of young researchers (among whom was Neal E. Miller) at Yale University in the 1930s who, inspired initially by Clark L. Hull, sought to combine learning theory and psychoanalysis. The groups' first major publication was Frustration and Aggression, and has become a classic which is still widely cited in introductory texts. It outlined a view, now referred to as the frustration-aggression hypothesis, which formed the basis for later developments such as Leonard Berkowitz's Aggression: A Social Psychological Analysis (1962) and the animal research on frustration and aggression in the 1960s and 1970s, which caused a controversy between the researchers and animal rights groups. Miller sums up Dollard's contributions to the group as such: "If trying to bring together contributions from sociology, anthropology, psychology, and psychotherapy no longer seems so novel, it is because Dollard and other pioneers had the courage and tenacity to break through traditional barriers".[6]
Publications
Dollard, J. Criteria for the life history, with analysis of six notable documents. New Haven: Published for the Institute of Human Relations by Yale University Press, 1935.
Dollard, John. Caste and Class in a Southern Town. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937.
Dollard, John, Leonard W. Doob, Neal E. Miller, Orval H. Mowrer and Robert R. Sears. Frustration and Aggression. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1939.
Dollard, J. & Davis, A. Children of bondage: the personality development of Negro youth in the urban south. Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1940.
Dollard, J., & Miller, N. Social learning and imitation. New Haven: Published for the Institute of Human Relations by Yale University Press, 1941.
Dollard, J. Fear in Battle. Yale University Press, 1943.
Dollard, J. The acquisition of new social habits. In R. Linton (Ed.), The science of man in the world crisis (pp.442–464). New York: Columbia University Press, 1945.
Dollard, J. Anniversary Papers of the Community Service Society: The Family in a Democratic Society. Columbia University Press, 1949.
Dollard, John and Neal E. Miller. Personality and Psychotherapy: An Analysis in Terms of Learning, Thinking, and Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950.
Dollard, John. Steps in Psychotherapy. New York: Macmillan, 1953.

Further reading
Archer, J. Dollard, John. In N. Sheehy, A. J. Chapman, & W. Conroy (Eds.), Biographical dictionary of psychology (pg. 149-150). New York, NY: Routledge, 1997.


Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher FRS[3] (17 February 1890– 29 July 1962) was a British statistician and geneticist. For his work in statistics, he has been described as "a genius who almost single-handedly created the foundations for modern statistical science"[4] and   "the single most important figure in 20th century statistics".[5] In genetics, his work used mathematics to combine Mendelian genetics and natural selection; this contributed to the revival of Darwinism in the early 20th-century revision of the theory of evolution known as the modern synthesis. For his contributions to biology, Fisher has been called "the greatest of Darwin’s successors".[6]
From 1919 onward, he worked at the Rothamsted Experimental Station for 14 years;[7] there, he analysed its immense data from crop experiments since the 1840s, and developed the analysis of variance (ANOVA). He established his reputation there in the following years as a biostatistician. He is known as one of the three principal founders of population genetics. He outlined Fisher's principle,  the Fisherian runaway and sexy son hypothesis theories of sexual selection.  His contributions to statistics include the maximum likelihood, fiducial inference, the derivation of various sampling distributions, founding principles of the design of experiments, and much more.
Fisher held strong views on race. Throughout his life, he was a prominent supporter of eugenics, an interest which led to his work on statistics and genetics.[8] Notably, he was a dissenting voice in UNESCO's statement The Race Question, insisting on racial differences.[9]
Early life and education

Fisher was born in East Finchley in London, England, into a middle-class household; his father, George, was a successful partner in Robinson & Fisher, auctioneers and fine art dealers.[10] He was one of twins, with the other twin being still-born[11] and grew up the youngest, with three sisters and one brother.[12] From 1896 until 1904 they lived at Inverforth House in London, where English Heritage installed a blue plaque in 2002, before moving to Streatham.[13] His mother, Kate, died from acute peritonitis when he was 14, and his father lost his business 18 months later.[10]
Lifelong poor eyesight caused his rejection by the British Army for World War I,[14] but also developed his ability to visualize problems in geometrical terms,  not in writing mathematical solutions, or proofs. He entered Harrow School age 14 and won the school's Neeld Medal in mathematics. In 1909, he won a scholarship to study Mathematics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. In 1912, he gained a First in Astronomy.[15]
In 1915 he published a paper The evolution of sexual preference[16] on sexual selection and mate choice.
Career
From 1913-1919, Fisher worked for six years as a statistician in the City of London and taught physics and maths at a sequence of public schools, at the Thames Nautical Training College, and at Bradfield College. There he settled with his new bride, Eileen Guinness, with whom he had two sons and six daughters.[17]
In 1918 he published "The Correlation Between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance", in which he introduced the term variance and proposed its formal analysis.[18] He put forward a genetics conceptual model showing that continuous variation amongst phenotypic traits measured by biostatisticians could be produced by the combined action of many discrete genes and thus be the result of Mendelian inheritance. This was the first step towards establishing population genetics and quantitative genetics, which demonstrated that natural selection could change allele frequencies in a population, resulting in reconciling its discontinuous nature with gradual evolution.[19]
Joan Box, Fisher's biographer and daughter says that Fisher had resolved this problem already in 1911.[20]
Rothamsted Experimental Station, 1919-1933
In 1919, he began working at the Rothamsted Experimental Station for 14 years,[7] where he analysed its immense data from crop experiments since the 1840s, and developed the analysis of variance (ANOVA).
In 1919, he was offered a position at the Galton Laboratory in University College London led by Karl Pearson, but instead accepted a temporary job at Rothamsted in Harpenden to investigate the possibility of analysing the vast amount of crop data accumulated since 1842 from the "Classical Field Experiments". He analysed the data recorded over many years and in 1921, published Studies in Crop Variation, and his first application of the analysis of variance ANOVA.[21] In 1928, Joseph Oscar Irwin began a three-year stint at Rothamsted and became one of the first people to master Fisher's innovations.
Between 1912 and 1922 Fisher recommended, analyzed (with flawed attempts at proofs) and vastly popularized Maximum likelihood.[22]

Fisher's 1924 article On a distribution yielding the error functions of several well known statistics presented Pearson's chi-squared test and William Gosset's Student's t-distribution in the same framework as the Gaussian distribution and is where he developed Fisher's z-distribution a new statistical method, commonly used decades later as the F distribution.
He pioneered the principles of the design of experiments and the statistics of small samples and the analysis of real data.
In 1925 he published Statistical Methods for Research Workers, one of the 20th century's most influential books on statistical methods.[23] Fisher's method[24][25] is a technique for data fusion or "meta-analysis" (analysis of analyses). This book also popularized the p-value, and plays a central role in his approach. Fisher proposes the level p=0.05, or a 1 in 20 chance of being exceeded by chance, as a limit for statistical significance, and applies this to a normal distribution (as a two-tailed test), thus yielding the rule of two standard deviations (on a normal distribution) for statistical significance.[26] The 1.96, the approximate value of the 97.5 percentile point of the normal distribution used in probability and statistics, also originated in this book.

"The value for which P=.05, or 1 in 20, is 1.96 or nearly 2 ; it is convenient to take this point as a limit in judging whether a deviation is to be considered significant or not."[27]

In Table 1 of the work, he gave the more precise value 1.959964.[28]
In 1928, Fisher  was the first to use diffusion equations to attempt to calculate the distribution of allele frequencies and the estimation of genetic linkage by maximum likelihood methods among populations.[29]
In 1930, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection was first published by Clarendon Press and is dedicated to Leonard Darwin. A core work of the neo-Darwinian modern evolutionary synthesis,[30] it helped define population genetics, which Fisher founded alongside Sewall Wright and J. B. S. Haldane, and revived Darwins neglected idea of sexual selection.[31]
One of Fischer´s favorite aphorisms was "Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability."[32]
Fisher´s fame grew and he began to travel and lecture widely. In 1931, he spent six weeks at the Statistical Laboratory at Iowa State College where he gave three lectures per week, and met many American statisticians, including George W. Snedecor. He returned there again in 1936.
University College London, 1933-39
In 1933, Fisher became the head of the Department of Eugenics at University College London.[33]
In 1935, he published The Design of Experiments, which was "also fundamental, [and promoted] statistical technique and application... The mathematical justification of the methods was not stressed and proofs were often barely sketched or omitted altogether .... [This] led H.B. Mann to fill the gaps with a rigorous mathematical treatment".[23][34]
In this book Fisher also outlined the Lady tasting tea, now a famous design of a statistical randomized experiment which uses Fisher's exact test and is the original exposition of Fisher's notion of a null hypothesis.[35][36]
The same year he also published a paper on fiducial inference[37][38] and applied it to the Behrens–Fisher problem, the solution to which, proposed first by Walter Behrens and a few years later by Fisher, is the Behrens–Fisher distribution.
In 1936 he introduced the Iris flower data set as an example of discriminant analysis.[39]
In his 1937 paper The wave of advance of advantageous genes he proposed Fisher's equation in the context of population dynamics to describe the spatial spread of an advantageous allele and explored its travelling wave solutions.[40] Out of this also came the Fisher–Kolmogorov equation.[41]
In 1937, he visited the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta, and its one part-time employee, P. C. Mahalanobis, often returning to encourage its development. He was the guest of honour at its 25th anniversary in 1957, when it had 2000 employees.[42]
In 1938, Fisher and Frank Yates described the Fisher–Yates shuffle in their book Statistical tables for biological, agricultural and medical research.[43] Their description of the algorithm used pencil and paper; a table of random numbers provided the randomness.
University of Cambridge, 1940-1956
In 1943, along with A.S. Corbet and C.B. Williams he published a paper on relative species abundance where he developed the logseries to fit two different abundance data sets[44] In the same year he took the Balfour Chair of Genetics where the Italian researcher Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza was recruited in 1948, establishing a one-man unit of bacterial genetics.
In 1936, Fisher used a Pearson's chi-squared test to analyze Mendel's data and concluded that Mendel's results with the predicted ratios were far too perfect, suggesting that adjustments (intentional or unconscious) had been made to the data to make the observations fit the hypothesis.[45] Later authors have claimed Fisher's analysis was flawed, proposing various statistical and botanical explanations for Mendel's numbers.[46][47] In 1947, Fisher cofounded the journal Heredity with Cyril Darlington and in 1949 he published The Theory of Inbreeding.
In 1950 he published "Gene Frequencies in a Cline Determined by Selection and Diffusion"[48] on the wave of advance of advantageous genes and on clines of gene frequency, being notable as the first application of a computer, the EDSAC, to biology. He developed computational algorithms for analyzing data from his balanced experimental designs,[49] with various editions and translations, becoming a standard reference work for scientists in many disciplines. In ecological genetics he and E. B. Ford showed how the force of natural selection was much stronger than had been assumed, with many ecogenetic situations (such as polymorphism) being maintained by the force of selection.
During this time he also worked on mouse chromosome mapping; breeding the mice in laboratories in his own house.[50]
Fisher publicly spoke out against the 1950 study showing that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer, arguing that correlation does not imply causation.[51][52][53][54][55][56] To quote his biographers Yates and Mather, "It has been suggested that the fact that Fisher was employed as consultant by the tobacco firms in this controversy casts doubt on the value of his arguments. This is to misjudge the man. He was not above accepting financial reward for his labours, but the reason for his interest was undoubtedly his dislike and mistrust of puritanical tendencies of all kinds; and perhaps also the personal solace he had always found in tobacco."[3]
He gave the 1953 Croonian lecture on population genetics.[57]
In the winter of 1954–1955 Fisher met Debabrata Basu, the Indian statistician who wrote in 1988, "With his reference set argument, Sir Ronald was trying to find a via media between the two poles of Statistics– Berkeley and Bayes.[58] My efforts to understand this Fisher compromise led me to the likelihood principle".[59]
Adelaide, 1957-1962

In 1957, a retired Fisher emigrated to Australia, where he spent time as a senior research fellow at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Adelaide. He died there in 1962, and his remains were interred within St Peter's Cathedral, Adelaide.[60]
Personal life and beliefs
He married Eileen Guinness, with whom he had two sons and six daughters.[17]
His marriage disintegrated during World War II, and his oldest son George, an aviator, was killed in combat.[61] His daughter Joan, who wrote a biography of her father, married the noted statistician George E. P. Box.[62]

According to Yates and Mather, "His large family, in particular, reared in conditions of great financial stringency, was a personal expression of his genetic and evolutionary convictions."[3] Fisher was noted for being loyal, and was seen as a patriot, a member of the Church of England, politically conservative, as well as a scientific rationalist. He developed a reputation for carelessness in his dress and was the archetype of the absent-minded professor. H. Allen Orr describes him in the Boston Review as a "deeply devout Anglican who, between founding modern statistics and population genetics, penned articles for church magazines".[63] In a 1955 broadcast on Science and Christianity,[3] he said:

“The custom of making abstract dogmatic assertions is not, certainly, derived from the teaching of Jesus, but has been a widespread weakness among religious teachers in subsequent centuries. I do not think that the word for the Christian virtue of faith should be prostituted to mean the credulous acceptance of all such piously intended assertions. Much self-deception in the young believer is needed to convince himself that he knows that of which in reality he knows himself to be ignorant. That surely is hypocrisy, against which we have been most conspicuously warned.”
Parapsychology
Fisher was involved with the Society for Psychical Research.[64][65]
Eugenics

In 1910 Fisher joined the Eugenics Society (UK) at University of Cambridge, whose members included John Maynard Keynes, R. C. Punnett, and Horace Darwin. He saw eugenics as addressing pressing social and scientific issues that encompassed and drove his interest in both genetics and statistics. During World War I Fisher started writing book reviews for the Eugenic Review and volunteered to undertake all such reviews for the journal, being hired for a part-time position. The last third of The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection focussed on eugenics, attributing the fall of civilizations to the fertility of their upper classes being diminished, and used British 1911 census data to show an inverse relationship between fertility and social class, partly due, he claimed, to the lower financial costs and hence increasing social status of families with fewer children. He proposed the abolition of extra allowances to large families, with the allowances proportional to the earnings of the father. He served in several official committees to promote eugenics. In 1934, he resigned from the Eugenics Society over a dispute about increasing the power of scientists within the movement.[66][8][67]
Race
In 1950, Fisher opposed UNESCO's The Race Question, believing that evidence and everyday experience showed that human groups differ profoundly "in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development" and concluded that the "practical international problem is that of learning to share the resources of this planet amicably with persons of materially different nature", and that "this problem is being obscured by entirely well-intentioned efforts to minimize the real differences that exist". The revised statement titled "The Race Concept: Results of an Inquiry" (1951) was accompanied by Fisher's dissenting commentary.[9]
Legacy
Fisher's former doctoral students include Walter Bodmer,[1] D. J. Finney,[1] Mary F. Lyon[2] and C. R. Rao[1] Although a prominent opponent of Bayesian statistics, Fisher was the first to use the term "Bayesian", in 1950.[68] The 1930 The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection is commonly cited in biology books, and outlines many important concepts, such as:
Parental investment, is any parental expenditure (time, energy etc.) that benefits one offspring at a cost to parents' ability to invest in other components of fitness,[69][70]
Fisherian runaway, explaining how the desire for a phenotypic trait in one sex combined with the trait in the other sex (for example a peacock's tail) creates a runaway development of the trait.
Fisher's principle, which explains why the sex ratio is mostly 1:1 in nature.
Reproductive value which implies that sexually reproductive value measures the contribution of an individual of a given age to the future growth of the population.[71][72]
Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection, which states that "the rate of increase in fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance in fitness at that time."[73]
Fisher's geometric model, an evolutionary model of the effect sizes on fitness of spontaneous mutations proposed by Fisher to explain the distribution of effects of mutations that could contribute to adaptive evolution.[74]
Sexy son hypothesis, which hypothesizes that females may choose arbitrarily attractive male mates simply because they are attractive, thus increasing the attractiveness of their sons who attract more mates of their own. This is in contrast to theories of female mate choice based on the assumption that females choose attractive males because the attractive traits are markers of male fitness.[75]
Mimicry, a similarity of one species to another that protects one or both
Dominance, a relationship between alleles of one gene, in which the effect on phenotype of one allele masks the contribution of a second allele at the same locus.[76]
Heterozygote advantage[77] which was later found to play a frequent role in genetic polymorphism.
Demonstrating that the probability of a mutation increasing the fitness of an organism decreases proportionately with the magnitude of the mutation and that larger populations carry more variation so that they have a greater chance of survival.
Fisher is also known for:
Linear discriminant analysis is a generalization of Fisher's linear discriminant[78][79]
Fisher information, see also scoring algorithm also known as Fisher's scoring, and Minimum Fisher information, a variational principle which, when applied with the proper constraints needed to reproduce empirically known expectation values, determines the best probability distribution that characterizes the system.[80]
F-distribution, arises frequently as the null distribution of a test statistic, most notably in the analysis of variance
Fisher–Tippett–Gnedenko theorem Fisher's contribution to this was made in 1927
Fisher–Tippett distribution
Von Mises–Fisher distribution[81]
Inverse probability, a term Fisher used in 1922, referring to "the fundamental paradox of inverse probability" as the source of the confusion between statistical terms which refer to the true value to be estimated, with the actual value arrived at by estimation, which is subject to error.[82]
Fisher's permutation test
Fisher's inequality[83]
Sufficient statistic, when a statistic is sufficient with respect to a statistical model and its associated unknown parameter if "no other statistic that can be calculated from the same sample provides any additional information as to the value of the parameter".[84]
Fisher's noncentral hypergeometric distribution, a generalization of the hypergeometric distribution, where sampling probabilities are modified by weight factors.
Student's t-distribution, widely-used in statistics.[85][86]
Recognition
Fisher was elected to the Royal Society in 1929. He was made a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II in 1952 and awarded the Linnean Society of London Darwin–Wallace Medal in 1958.
He won Copley Medal and the Royal Medal. He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1924 in Toronto and in 1928 in Bologna.[87]
In 1950, Maurice Wilkes and David Wheeler used the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator to solve a differential equation relating to gene frequencies in a paper by Ronald Fisher.[88] This represents the first use of a computer for a problem in the field of biology. The Kent distribution (also known as the Fisher–Bingham distribution) was named after him and Christopher Bingham in 1982 while Fisher kernel was named after Fisher in 1998.[89]
The R. A. Fisher Lectureship is a North American annual lecture prize, established in 1963. On 28 April 1998 a minor planet, 21451 Fisher, was named after him.[90]
Anders Hald called Fisher "a genius who almost single-handedly created the foundations for modern statistical science",[4] while Richard Dawkins named him "the greatest biologist since Darwin": Not only was he the most original and constructive of the architects of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, Fisher also was the father of modern statistics and experimental design. He therefore could be said to have provided researchers in biology and medicine with their most important research tools, as well as with the modern version of biology's central theorem.[91]
Geoffrey Miller said of him:To biologists, he was an architect of the "modern synthesis" that used mathematical models to integrate Mendelian genetics with Darwin's selection theories. To psychologists, Fisher was the inventor of various statistical tests that are still supposed to be used whenever possible in psychology journals. To farmers, Fisher was the founder of experimental agricultural research, saving millions from starvation through rational crop breeding programs.[92]
Bibliography

Sources

Further reading

.

Who is the most famous statistician in history?


The Allegheny Mountain Range /ælɪˈɡeɪni/, informally the Alleghenies and also spelled Alleghany and Allegany, is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada and posed a significant barrier to land travel in less technologically advanced eras. The barrier range has a northeast–southwest orientation and runs for about 400 miles (640km) from north-central Pennsylvania, through western Maryland and eastern West Virginia, to southwestern Virginia.
The Alleghenies comprise the rugged western-central portion of the Appalachians. They rise to approximately 4,862 feet (1,483 m) in northeastern West Virginia. In the east, they are dominated by a high, steep escarpment known as the Allegheny Front. In the west, they slope down into the closely associated Allegheny Plateau, which extends into Ohio and Kentucky. The principal settlements of the Alleghenies are Altoona, State College, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania; and Cumberland, Maryland.
Name
The name is derived from the Allegheny River, which drains only a small portion of the Alleghenies in west-central Pennsylvania. The meaning of the word, which comes from the Lenape (Delaware) Indians, is not definitively known but is usually translated as "fine river".  A Lenape legend tells of an ancient tribe called the "Allegewi" who lived on the river and were defeated by the Lenape.[1] Allegheny is the early French spelling (as in Allegheny River, which was once part of New France), and Allegany is closer to the early English spelling (as in Allegany County, Maryland, Allegany County, New York, or Alleghany County, Virginia).
The word "Allegheny" was once commonly used to refer to the whole of what are now called the Appalachian Mountains.  John Norton used it (spelled variously) around 1810 to refer to the mountains in Tennessee and Georgia.[2] Around the same time, Washington Irving proposed renaming the United States either "Appalachia" or "Alleghania".[1] In 1861, Arnold Henry Guyot published the first systematic geologic study of the whole mountain range.[3] His map labeled the range as the "Alleghanies", but his book was titled On the Appalachian Mountain System. As late as 1867, John Muir—in his book A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf—used the word "Alleghanies" in referring to the southern Appalachians.
There was no general agreement about the "Appalachians" versus the "Alleghanies" until the late 19th century.[1]
Geography

Extent
From northeast to southwest, the Allegheny Mountains run about 400 miles (640km). From west to east, at their widest, they are about 100 miles (160km).
Although there are no official boundaries to the Allegheny Mountains region, it may be generally defined to the east by the Allegheny Front; to the north by the Susquehanna River valley; and to the south by the New River valley. To the west, the Alleghenies grade down into the dissected Allegheny Plateau (of which they are sometimes considered to be a part). The westernmost ridges are considered to be the Laurel Highlands and Chestnut Ridge in Pennsylvania, and Laurel Mountain and Rich Mountain in West Virginia.
The mountains to the south of the Alleghenies—the Appalachians in westernmost Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and eastern Tennessee—are the Cumberlands. The Alleghenies and the Cumberlands both constitute part of the Ridge and Valley Province of the Appalachians.
Allegheny Front and Allegheny Highlands

The eastern edge of the Alleghenies is marked by the Allegheny Front, which is also sometimes considered the eastern terminus of the Allegheny Plateau. This great escarpment roughly follows a portion of the Eastern Continental Divide in this area. A number of impressive gorges and valleys drain the Alleghenies: to the east, Smoke Hole Canyon (South Branch Potomac River), and to the west the New River Gorge and the Blackwater and Cheat Canyons. Thus, about half the precipitation falling on the Alleghenies makes its way west to the Mississippi and half goes east to Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic seaboard.
The highest ridges of the Alleghenies are just west of the Front, which has an east/west elevational change of up to 3,000 feet (910m).  Absolute elevations of the Allegheny Highlands reach nearly 5,000 feet (1,500m), with the highest elevations in the southern part of the range. The highest point in the Allegheny Mountains is Spruce Knob (4,863ft/1,482 m), on Spruce Mountain in West Virginia. Other notable Allegheny highpoints include Thorny Flat on Cheat Mountain (4,848ft/1478 m), Bald Knob on Back Allegheny Mountain (4,842ft/1476 m), and Mount Porte Crayon (4,770ft/1,454 m), all in West Virginia; Dans Mountain (2,898ft/883m) in Maryland, Backbone Mountain (3360ft/1024 m), the highest point in Maryland; Mount Davis (3,213ft/979 m), the highest point in Pennsylvania, and the second highest, Blue Knob (3,146ft/959 m).
Development
There are very few sizable cities in the Alleghenies. The four largest are (in descending order of population): Altoona, State College, Johnstown (all in Pennsylvania) and Cumberland (in Maryland). In the 1970s and '80s, the Interstate Highway System was extended into the northern portion of the Alleghenies, and the region is now served by a network of federal expressways—Interstates 80, 70/76 and 68. Interstate 64 traverses the southern extremity of the range, but the Central Alleghenies (the "High Alleghenies" of eastern West Virginia) have posed special problems for highway planners owing to the region's very rugged terrain and environmental sensitivities (see Corridor H.) This region is still served by a rather sparse secondary highway system and remains considerably lower in population density than surrounding regions.
In the telecommunications field, a unique impediment to development in the central Allegheny region is the United States National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ), a large rectangle of land—about 13,000 square miles (34,000km2)—that straddles the border area of Virginia and West Virginia. Created in 1958 by the Federal Communications Commission, the NRQZ severely restricts all omnidirectional and high-power radio transmissions, although cell phone service is allowed throughout much of the area.
Protected areas
Much of the Monongahela (West Virginia), George Washington (West Virginia, Virginia) and Jefferson (Virginia) National Forests lie within the Allegheny Mountains. (No part of the wooded Alleghenies in Maryland or Pennsylvania, however, is managed by the U.S. Forest Service.) The Alleghenies also include a number of federally designated wilderness areas, such as the Dolly Sods Wilderness, Laurel Fork Wilderness, and Cranberry Wilderness in West Virginia.
The mostly completed Allegheny Trail, a project of the West Virginia Scenic Trails Association since 1975, runs the length of the range within West Virginia. The northern terminus is at the Mason–Dixon line and the southern is at the West Virginia-Virginia border on Peters Mountain.[4]
Geology
The bedrock of the Alleghenies is mostly sandstone and metamorphosed sandstone, quartzite, which is extremely resistant to weathering.  Prominent beds of resistant conglomerate can be found in some areas, such as the Dolly Sods.  When it weathers, it leaves behind a pure white quartzite gravel. The rock layers of the Alleghenies were formed during the Appalachian orogeny.
Because of intense freeze-thaw cycles in the higher Alleghenies, there is little native bedrock exposed in most areas.  The ground surface usually rests on a massive jumble of sandstone rocks, with air space between them, that are gradually moving down-slope.  The crest of the Allegheny Front is an exception, where high bluffs are often exposed.
Mineral springs in the High Alleghenies attracted Native Americans and 18th century white settlers and provided a modest incentive to the local economy. The spas developing around these geological features include celebrated resorts that continue to cater to an exclusive clientele, such as The Greenbrier (White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia; hotel built 1858) and The Homestead (Hot Springs, Virginia; original lodge built 1766).
Ecology
Flora
The High Alleghenies are noted for their forests of red spruce, balsam fir, and mountain ash, trees typically found much farther north. Hardwood forests also include yellow birch, sugar and red maple, eastern hemlock, and black cherry. American beech, pine and hickory can also be found. The forests of the entire region are now almost all second- or third-growth forests, the original trees having been removed in the late 19th and (in West Virginia) early 20th centuries. The wild onion known as the ramp (Allium tricoccum) is also present in the deeper forests.
Certain isolated areas in the High Alleghenies are well known for their open expanses of sphagnum bogs and heath shrubs (e.g., Dolly Sods, Cranberry Glades). Many plant communities are indeed similar to those of sea-level eastern Canada. But the ecosystems within the Alleghenies are remarkably varied. In recent decades, the many stages of ecologic succession throughout the area have made the region one of enduring interest to botanists.
Fauna
The larger megafauna which once inhabited the High Alleghenies—elk, bison, mountain lion—were all exterminated during the 19th century. They survived longer in this area, however, than in other parts of the eastern United States. Naturalist John James Audubon reported that by 1851 a few eastern elk (Cervus canadensis canadiensis) could still be found in the Alleghany Mountains but that by then they were virtually gone from the remainder of their range. Mammals in the Allegheny region today include whitetail deer, chipmunk, raccoon, skunk, groundhog, opossum, weasel, field mouse, flying squirrel, cottontail rabbit, gray foxes, red foxes, gray squirrels, red squirrels and a cave bat. Bobcat, snowshoe hare, wild boar and black bear and coyote are also found in the forests and parks of the Alleghenies. Mink and beaver are much less often seen.
These mountains and plateau have over 20 species of reptiles represented as lizard, skink, turtle and snake. Some of the icterid birds visit the mountains as well as the hermit thrush and wood thrush. North American migrant birds live throughout the mountains during the warmer seasons. Occasionally, osprey and eagles can be found nesting along the streams. The hawks and owls are the most common birds of prey.
The water habitats of the Alleghenies hold 24 families of fish. Amphibian species number about 21, among them hellbenders, lungless salamanders, and various toads and frogs. The Alleghenies provide habitat for about 54 species of common invertebrate. These include Gastropoda, slugs, leech, earthworms and grub worm. Cave crayfish (Cambarus nerterius) live alongside a little over seven dozen cave invertebrates.[5]
History
Pre-contact Native Americans
The indigenous people inhabiting the Allegheny Mountains emerged from the greater region's archaic and mound building cultures, particularly the Adena and Eastern Woodland peoples with a later Hopewellian influence. These Late Middle Woodland culture people have been called the Montaine (c. A.D. 500 to 1000) culture.[6][7] Their neighbors, the woodland Buck Garden culture, lived in the western valleys of the central Allegheny range. The Montaine sites extend from the tributaries of the upper Potomac River region south to the New River tributaries. These also were influenced by the earlier Armstrong culture of the more southwestern portions northern sub-range of the Ouasioto (Cumberland) Mountains and by the more easterly Virginia Woodland people. The Late Woodland Montaine were less influenced by Hopewellian trade from Ohio, although similarly polished stone tools have been found among the Montaine sites in the Tygart Valley.[8] Small groups of Montaine people appear to have lingered much beyond their classically defined period in parts of the most mountainous valleys.[9]
The watershed of the Monongahela River is within the northwestern Alleghenies, and it is from it that the Monongahela culture takes its name. The Godwin-Portman site (36AL39) located in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, had a possible Fort Ancient (c. AD 850 to 1680) presence during the 15th century.[10] Washington Boro ceramics have been found on the Barton (18AG3) and Llewellyn (18AG26) sites in Maryland on the northeastern slopes of the late Susquehannock sequence. The early Monongahela (c. AD 900 to 1630) are called the Drew Tradition in Pennsylvania. According to Richard L. George: "I believe that some of the Monongahela were of Algonquin origin.... Other scholars have suggested that Iroquoian speakers were interacting with Late Monongahela people, and additional evidence is presented to confirm this. I conclude that the archaeologically conceived term, Monongahela, likely encompasses speakers of several languages, including Siouan."[11] According to Dr Maslowski of West Virginia in 2009: "The New River Drainage and upper Potomac represents the range of the Huffman Phase (Page) hunting and gathering area or when it is found in small amounts on village sites, trade ware or Page women being assimulated into another village (tribe)." Finally, according to Prof Potter of Virginia, they [the people represented by the Huffman Phase of Page pottery] had occupied the eastern slopes of the Alleghenies on the upper Potomac to the northern, lower Shenandoah Valley region before the A.D. 1300 Luray Phase (Algonquian) peoples' "invasion". It is thought that these ancient Alleghenians were pushed from the classic Huffman Phase of the eastern slopes of the Alleghenies to the Blue Ridge Mountains in western Virginia, which was eastern Siouan territory.

In 1669, John Lederer and members of his party became the first Europeans to crest the Blue Ridge Mountains and the first to see the Shenandoah Valley and the Allegheny Mountains beyond.
Native Americans in the 17th century
The proto-historic Alleghenies can be exampled by the earliest journals of the colonists. According to Batts and Fallows' September, 1671 Expedition, they found Mehetan Indians of Mountain "Cherokee-Iroquois" mix on the New River tributaries. This journal does not identify the "Salt Village", but, that the "Mehetan" were associated with these and today thought to be "Monetons", Siouans. However, this journal does not identify the "Salt Village" below the Kanawha Falls, but, that simply the "Mehetan" were associated with these. He explained, below the "Salt Villages", a mass of hostile Indians had, implied, arrived and some believe these to be "Shanwans" of Vielles Expedition of 1692~94, ancient Shawnee. In 1669, John Lederer of Maryland for the Virginia Colony and the Tennessee Cherokee had visited the mouth of the Kanawha and reported no hostilities on the lower streams of the Alleghenies. The Mohetan representative through a Siouan translator explained to Mr Batts and Mr Fallon, Colonel Abraham Woods explorers 1671-2, that he (Moheton Native American) could not say much about the people below the "Salt Village" because they (Mountain Cherokee) were not associated with them. The Mohetan was armed by this time of 1671 for the Mohetan Representative was given several pouches of ammunition for his and the other's weapons as a token of friendship. Somebody had already been trading within the central Alleghenies before the Virginians historical record begins in the Allegheny Mountains. Some earlier scholars found evidence these Proto-historics were either Cistercians of Spanish Ajacan Occuquan outpost on the Potomac River or Jesuits and their Kahnawake Praying Indians (Mohawk) on the Riviere de la Ronceverte. The "Kanawha Madonna" may date from this period or earlier. Where the New River breaks through Peters' Mountain, near Pearisburg Virginia the 1671 journal mentions the "Moketans had formerly lived".
According to a number of early 17th century maps, the Messawomeake or "Mincquas" (Dutch) occupied the northern Allegheny Mountains. The "Shatteras" (an ancient Tutelo) occupied the Ouasioto Mountains and the earliest term Canaraguy (Kanawhans otherwise Canawest[12]) on the 1671 French map occupied the southerly Alleghenies. They were associated with the Allegheny "Cherokee" and Eastern Siouan as trade-movers and canoe transporters. The Calicuas, an ancient most northern Cherokee, migrated or was pushed from the Central Ohio Valley onto the north eastern slopes of the Alleghenies of the ancient Messawomeake, Iroquois tradesmen to 1630s Kent Island, by 1710 maps. Sometime before 1712, the Canawest ("Kanawhans"-"Canallaway"-"Canaragay") had moved to the upper Potomac and made a Treaty with the newly established trading post of Fort Conolloway which would become a part of western Maryland during the 1740s.
Trading posts and other settlements
Prior to European exploration and settlement, trails through the Alleghenies had been transited for many generations by American Indian tribes such as the Iroquois, Shawnee, Delaware, Catawba and others, for purposes of trade, hunting and, especially, warfare.[13] Western Virginia "Cherokee" were reported at Cherokee Falls, today's Valley Falls of the Tygart Valley.[14] Indian trader Charles Poke's trading post dates from 1731 with the Calicuas of Cherokee Falls still in the region from the previous century.
The "London Scribes" (The Crown's taxation records) vaguely mentions the colonial Alleghenian location of only a few other early colonial trading locations. A general knowledge of these few outposts are more of traditional telling of some local people. However, an example is the "Van Metre" trading house mentioned in an earlier edition of the "Wonderful West Virginia Magazine" being on the South Branches of the upper reaches of the Potomac. Another very early trading house appears on a lower Greenbrier Valley map during the earlier decades of the 18th century.
As early as 1719, new arrivals from Europe began to cross the lower Susquehanna River and settle illegally in defiance of the Board of Property in Pennsylvania, on un-warranted land of the northeastern drainage rivers of the Allegheny Mountains. Several Indian Nations requested the removal of "Maryland Intruders".[15] Some of these moved onward as territory opened up beyond the Alleghenies.
The first permanent European settlers west of the Alleghenies have traditionally been considered to have been two New Englanders: Jacob Marlin and Stephen Sewell, who arrived in the Greenbrier Valley in 1749. They built a cabin together at what would become Marlinton, West Virginia, but after disputing over religion, Sewell moved into a nearby hollowed-out sycamore tree. In 1751, surveyor John Lewis (father of Andrew Lewis) discovered the pair. Sewell eventually settled on the eastern side of Sewell Mountain, near present-day Rainelle, West Virginia.[16] They may well have been the first to settle what was then called the "western waters"—i.e., in the regions where streams flowed westward to the Gulf of Mexico rather than eastward to the Atlantic.
First surveys

Among the first whites to penetrate into the Allegheny Mountains were surveyors attempting to settle a dispute over the extent of lands belonging to either Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron or to the English Privy Council. An expedition of 1736 by John Savage established the location of the source of the North Branch Potomac River. In March 1742, a frontiersman named John Howard—along with his son and others—had been commissioned by Governor Gooch to explore the southwest of Virginia as far as the Mississippi River. Following Cedar Creek through the Natural Bridge, they floated in buffalo-skin boats down the New, Coal, Kanawha, and Ohio Rivers to the Mississippi. Although captured by the French before he reached Natchez, Howard was eventually released and (in 1745) was interviewed by Fairfax. Howard's description of the South Branch Potomac River resulted in the definite decision by Fairfax to secure his lands in the region.[17] An expedition under Peter Jefferson and Thomas Lewis in the following year emplaced the "Fairfax Stone" at the source of the North Branch and established a line of demarcation (the "Fairfax Line") extending from the stone south-east to the headwaters of the Rappahannock River. Lewis' journal of that expedition provides a valuable view of the Allegheny country before its settlement.[18]  Jefferson and Joshua Fry's "Fry-Jefferson Map" of 1751 accurately depicted the Alleghenies for the first time. In the following decades,  pioneer settlers arrived in the Alleghenies, especially during Colonial Virginia's Robert Dinwiddie era (1751–58). These included squatters by the Quit-rent Law. Some had preceded the official surveyors using a "hack on the tree and field of corn" marking land ownership approved by the Virginia Colonial Governor who had to be replaced with Governor John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore.
First roads

Trans-Allegheny travel had been facilitated when a military trail—Braddock Road—was blazed and opened by the Ohio Company in 1751. (It followed an earlier Indian and pioneer trail known as Nemacolin's Path.) Braddock Road connected Cumberland, Maryland (the upper limit of navigation on the Potomac River) and the forks of the Ohio River (the future Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). It received its name from the British leader of the French and Indian War (1754–63), General Edward Braddock, who led the ill-fated Braddock expedition four years later.[19]
In addition to the war, hunting and trading with Indians were primary motivations for white movement across the mountains. Permanent white settlement of the northern Alleghenies was facilitated by the explorations and stories of such noted Marylanders as the Indian fighter and trader Thomas Cresap (1702–90) and the backwoodsman and hunter Meshach Browning (1781–1859).[20] In the late 18th century, a massive migration to the Monongahela River basin took place over three main routes: along the old Braddock Road via Winchester, Virginia; through the Shenandoah Valley to the head of the Cheat River and from there to the Monongahela; and along the Lincoln Highway to Ligonier, Pennsylvania, and thence along Jacob's Creek to the Monongahela. These immigrants were predominantly Scotch-Irish, German, and, to a lesser extent, British stock.[21]
The Braddock Road was superseded by the Cumberland Road—also called the National Road—one of the first major improved highways in the United States to be built by the federal government. Construction began in 1811 at Cumberland and the road reached Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) on the Ohio River in 1818. Just to the south, the state-funded Staunton and Parkersburg Turnpike was constructed to provide a direct route for the settlements of the Shenandoah Valley to the Ohio River by way of the Tygart Valley and Little Kanawha Rivers. Planned and approved in 1826 and completed in 1848, the Staunton and Parkersburg was maintained by fees (tolls) collected at toll houses placed at regular intervals.
First railroads and canals
Construction on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad began at Baltimore in 1828; the B&O traversed the Alleghenies, changing the economy and society of the Mountains forever. The B&O had reached Martinsburg, (West) Virginia by May 1842, Hancock, (West) Virginia, by June, Cumberland, Maryland, on November 5, 1842, Piedmont, (West) Virginia on July 21, 1851, and Fairmont, (West) Virginia on June 22, 1852. (It finally reached its Ohio River terminus at Wheeling, (West) Virginia on January 1, 1853.)
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal—also begun in 1828, but at Georgetown—was also a public work of enormous economic and social significance for the Alleghenies. It approached Hancock, Maryland by 1839. From the beginning, the B&O Railroad and the C&O Canal operated in bitter legal and commercial competition with one another as they vied for rights to the narrow strips of land along the Potomac.[22] When the Canal finally reached Cumberland in 1850, the Railroad had already arrived eight years before.[23] Debt-ridden, the Canal company dropped its plan to continue construction of the next 180 miles (290km) of the Canal into the Ohio Valley.[24] The company had long realized—especially with the difficult experience of digging the Paw Paw Tunnel—that the original plan of construction over the mountains and all the way down the Youghiogheny River to Pittsburgh was "wildly unrealistic".[25]
Public works financed at the state level were not lacking during this period. The Main Line of Public Works was a railroad and canal system across southern Pennsylvania between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Built between 1826 and 1834 by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, it included the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, the Allegheny Portage Railroad and the Pennsylvania Canal system.

Civil War
Lying astride the border separating the Union and Confederacy, the Alleghenies were among the areas most directly affected by the American Civil War (1861–1865). One of the earliest campaigns of the War was fought for control of the Staunton and Parkersburg Turnpike and for the access it provided to the B&O Railroad. The Battle of Rich Mountain (July 11, 1861) gave the Federals control of the turnpike, of Tygart's Valley, and of all of the territory of western Virginia to the north and west, including the railroad. (Union General George McClellan's victory in this theater would ultimately bring him promotion to commander the Army of the Potomac.) The Federals fortified at Cheat Summit, and the Confederates established strongholds at Camp Bartow and Camp Allegheny. Here they faced each other warily through the fall of 1861 and the following winter. General Robert E. Lee's attempt to attack Cheat Summit Fort (September 12–15, 1861) and Federal attempts to attack Bartow and Allegheny, all failed to change the strategic stalemate. Finally, the harsh, high elevation winter achieved what the troops had failed to accomplish, and in the spring of 1862 both armies moved on down the pike to the Battle of McDowell (May 8, 1862), and then on to fight what became General Stonewall Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign (spring 1862). Two years later, much of this contested area (along with much else) became part of the new state of West Virginia. The very rugged terrain of the Alleghenies was not at all amenable to a large-scale maneuver war and so the actions that the area witnessed for the remainder of the conflict were generally guerrilla in nature.
Coal and timber industries
With the further spread of the railroad networks in the 1890s and early 1900s, many new towns developed and thrived in the Alleghenies. The lumbering and coal industries that boomed in the wake of the railroads brought a measure of prosperity to the region, but most of the revenues flowed out of the mountains to the cities of the eastern seaboard where the captains of industry were headquartered. This inequity created a bitter legacy that would last for generations and form the foundation of the mountaineers' poverty and the area's immense environmental degradation.
The most momentous disaster to afflict the people of the Alleghenies was the Johnstown Flood—locally known as the "Great Flood of 1889"—which occurred on May 31 of that year after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam on the Little Conemaugh River 14 miles (23km) upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The dam broke after several days of extremely heavy rainfall, unleashing 20 million tons of water (18 million cubic meters) from the reservoir known as Lake Conemaugh. (This body of water had been built as part of the Main Line of Public Works, then abandoned.) With a flow rate that temporarily equalled that of the Mississippi River,[26] the flood killed 2,209 people[27] and caused US$17 million of damage (about $425 million in 2012 dollars). The American Red Cross, led by Clara Barton and with 50 volunteers, undertook a major disaster relief effort.[28] Support for victims came from all over the United States and 18 foreign countries. After the flood, survivors suffered a series of legal defeats in their attempts to recover damages from the dam's owners. Public indignation at that failure prompted the development in American law changing a fault-based regime to strict liability.
20th century
In the 1920s and '30s, Allegheny highways were extensively paved to provide access for automobiles.
From the 1950s to 1992, the United States government maintained a top secret continuity program known as Project Greek Island at The Greenbrier hotel in the Alleghenies of southern West Virginia.
In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King referenced the Alleghenies—among several in an evocative list of mountains—in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, when he said "Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!"
21st century
The Flight 93 National Memorial is located at the site of the crash of United Airlines Flight 93—which was hijacked in the September 11 attacks—in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania, about 2 miles (3.2km) north of Shanksville. The memorial honors the passengers and crew of Flight 93, who stopped Al-Qaeda terrorists from reaching their intended target.
Photo gallery

Cumberland, Maryland with Wills Mountain and the Cumberland Narrows in the background.
North Fork Mountain, West Virginia, looking south
Blue Knob, Pennsylvania, the northernmost 3,000 footer in the Alleghenies.
The Homestead, Hot Springs, Virginia has catered to spa enthusiasts since 1766.
Shenandoah Mountain, at the easternmost limit of the Alleghenies.
Laurel Mountain, West Virginia, at the westernmost limit of the Alleghenies.
Allegheny Mountain Tunnel, through Allegheny Mountain, services Interstate 76 in Pennsylvania.
New River Gorge, Section of the cliff at Endless Wall cliff.
Germany Valley, a scenic upland valley of eastern West Virginia.
The grand hotel at The Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, was built in 1858.
The Blackwater Canyon, a rugged gorge in eastern West Virginia.
A Norfolk Southern train at Horseshoe Curve near Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Cheat Canyon, in Coopers Rock State Forest, northeastern West Virginia.
Dolly Sods Wilderness, West Virginia: View from atop Breathed Mountain.
Eastern entrance to the Paw Paw Tunnel on the C&O Canal towpath in Maryland.
Altoona, Pennsylvania viewed from atop Brush Mountain.

See also
High Allegheny National Park and Preserve, a proposed NPS unit in eastern West Virginia
Notes
Citations

Folklore:
McNeill, G.D. (Douglas), The Last Forest, Tales of the Allegheny Woods, n.p., 1940 (Reprinted with preface by Louise McNeill, Pocahontas Communications Cooperative Corporation, Dunmore, W. Va. and McClain Printing Company, Parsons, W. Va, 1989.)
Botany:
Core, Earl L. (1967), "Wildflowers of the Alleghenies", J. Alleghenies, 4(l):I, 2-4.
Core, Earl L. (1943), "Botanizing in the Higher Alleghenies", Sci. Monthly, 57:119-125.

What is the tallest mountain in the Allegheny mountain range?


Relations between Austria and Germany are close, due to their shared history and language, with German being the official language and Germans being the largest ethnic group of both countries.
Modern-day Austria and Germany were united until 1866: their predecessors were part of the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation until the unification of German states under Prussia in 1871, which excluded Austria. In 1918 after the end of World War I, Austria renamed itself the Republic of German-Austria in an attempt for union with Germany but this was forbidden by the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919). In 1938, the Third Reich, led by Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, annexed Austria in the Anschluss.
After Austria's entry into the European Union in 1995, both countries are member-states of the Schengen Agreement. Whereas Germany is a member nation of NATO, Austria remains a partner to NATO in accordance with its constitution to maintain neutrality.
History
Holy Roman Empire

Throughout the Middle and Early-modern Ages, the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) encompassed all of the present territories of Germany, Austria, Bohemia (Czech Republic), Slovenia, northern Italy and the western part of modern-day Poland. The House of Habsburg became the ruling family of the Empire in 1440; the family would remain so until the dissolution of the Austrian Empire in 1919.
Austria has been the Habsburg's seat of power and the dominant state within the realm. The numerous Germanic states (within the HRE) constantly jostled for power and influence; they often warred against each other. In the 18th century, the Kingdom of Prussia rose as another influential power within the HRE; therefore, Prussia became Austria's main rival for dominance over their neighbouring German states. Prussia and Austria fought a series of wars over the province of Silesia (in modern-day southwestern Poland) between 1740 and 1763.
Napoleonic Wars and German Confederation

The Holy Roman Empire came to an end during the Napoleonic Wars in the 1790s and 1800s, Austria and Prussia allied with each other but fought unsuccessfully against the French Empire. In 1804, Francis II, the Holy Roman Emperor, proclaimed the Austrian Empire, as the remaining German States had become clients of Napoleon's French Empire under the Confederation of the Rhine.
After Napoleon's defeat in 1815, Austria created the German Confederation as a new organisation among the German States, in which Prussia and Austria became reunited. It was during this period that the ideology of Pan-Germanism started to rise. The German Confederation lacked a monarch or a central government with real unifying force. As a result, dualism within the German Confederation laid foundation to the diplomatic tension between Prussia and Austria, who had ambitions to create a unified Germany under their different proposals.
Austria proposed to unite the German states in a union centered on, and dominated by, the Habsburgs; Prussia, however, hoped to become the central forces in unifying the German states and to exclude Austria out of its affairs. In 1834, Prussia succeeded in creating a German Customs Union with northern German states with the hope of political union as its next step. The tension eventually gave rise to the 1866 Austro-Prussian War (Fraternal War of the Germans). Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of Prussia, sided with Italy to surround Austria and bring about the latter's defeat. The Austrian Empire was dissolved into the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, with the loss of their influence over southern German states (Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria).
German Empire without Austria

In 1867, the new North German Confederation was declared by Bismarck. After Prussia's victory in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, in which Prussian army entered and marched over Paris, Bismarck announced the creation of the German Empire and excluded Austria-Hungary solely in this unified Germany. Austria-Hungary then turned its imperial ambitions to the Balkan Peninsula; whereas the German Empire focused on building armaments in a race against the United Kingdom (Britain and Ireland). Nevertheless, both the German Empire and Austria-Hungary forged a military alliance with the Kingdom of Italy, forming the Triple Alliance (1882).
In the 1910s, Austria-Hungary's ambition of turning Serbia into its protectorate facilitated the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1914), heir to Austria-Hungary's throne. When Austria-Hungary stirred up excuses for a war (First World War) against Serbia, Germany, claiming the Alliance's terms of passive military defence instead of downright aggression, reluctantly entered the war on Austria-Hungary's side.
Inter-war period

After losing the war, the Habsburgs of Austria-Hungary were overthrown and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicated in 1918. Both Germany and Austria became republics and were heavily punished in the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye (1919). Austria lost over 60% of its pre-war territory (mostly settled by non-ethnic Germans) and was hugely reduced to a rump state, The Republic of German-Austria. The vast majority in both countries wanted unification with Germany (now the Weimar Republic) into a Greater German nation, but this was strictly forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles to avoid a dominant German state.
On 1 September 1920, the Weimar Republic and Austria concluded an economic agreement. [1] Both countries, however, faced severe economic hardships, hyperinflation, mass unemployment and constant riots after the war. After Austrian-born Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, he demanded the right to Anschluss (union) between Austria and Germany. This was initially blocked by the Italian Fascist government under Benito Mussolini, who cooperated with his Austrian counterparts Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg, fearing retrospective territorial demands from Hitler on Südtirol (South Tyrol) (lost to Italy in 1919). Mussolini successfully forced Hitler to renounce all claims to Austria on 11 July 1936.
Anschluss
After 1936, Hitler and Mussolini forged a closer relationship in preparation for Germany's expansionist ambitions. Hitler used the Nazi Party of Austria to influence public opinions and staged a coup against the Austrian Fascist government in 1938. When Hitler decided to refrain from reclaiming South Tyrol, Mussolini abandoned his pledge to protect Austria's independence. Subsequently, the Anschluss of the Third German Reich and Germany-Austria occurred in 1938, reuniting both countries for the first time since the 1870s. Austria became Ostmark (Eastern Region) under Hitler's regime.
Cold War

In late April 1945, the Allied Powers entered Austria and removed the country from the Third German Reich. A provisional Austrian government, led by Karl Renner, declared the country's regained independence. Austria's democratic constitution was reinstated and elections in late 1945 paved the way for a new federal government. Leopold Figl became the first Chancellor of Austria. Germany, however, was occupied by the Allied Powers and divided into four governing zones: British, French, American and the Soviet. Military occupation of Germany ended in 1949 when such zones were organised into the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
After the Second World War, there has been no serious effort among the citizens or political parties to unite Germany and Austria. In addition, the Austrian State Treaty forbids such a union and the constitution required Austria's neutrality. A 1987 survey revealed that only 6% of Austrians identified themselves as 'Germans'. Austria began to develop a separate national identity from Germany, although both countries continued to co-operate closely in economic and cultural fields during the Cold War. Moreover, political relations between both countries have been strong and amicable.
European Union

In 1995, Austria joined the European Union and Schengen Area. This effectively removed the physical land-border between Germany and Austria and allowed both countries to further consolidate their already strong links. In 1999, Germany and Austria became two of the founding members of the Eurozone and adopted Euros as their legal currency in 2001.
Espionage
According to reporting in Der Standard and profil, the Bundesnachrichtendienst engaged in espionage in Austria between 1999 and 2006, spying on targets including the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the Austria Press Agency, embassies, and Austrian banks and government ministries.[2] The government on Austria has called on Germany to clarify the allegations.[2]
See also
German nationalism in Austria
Pan-Germanism
Notes

Further reading

Katzenstein, Peter J. Disjoined partners: Austria and Germany since 1815 (1976)

Did Austria ever become part of Prussia?