Career
Walcott began his professional paleontology career by discovering new localities, such as the Walcott-Rust quarry in upstate New York and the Georgia Plane trilobite beds in Vermont, and by selling specimens to Yale University. In 1876, he became the assistant to James Hall, State Geologist of New York. Walcott also became a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In 1879, Walcott joined the US Geological Survey and rose to become its director in 1894. He worked especially on the Cambrian layer in locations throughout the United States, making numerous field trips and linking the fossils he collected to the sequence of rocks in a way that made important contributions to stratigraphy.
He married Helena Breese Stevens in 1888. They had four children between 1889 and 1896: Charles Doolittle Walcott, Sydney Stevens Walcott, Helena Breese Walcott, and Benjamin Stuart Walcott.
Walcott was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1896. In 1902, he met with Andrew Carnegie and became one of the founders and incorporators of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. He served in various administrative and research positions in that organization. In 1921 Walcott was awarded the inaugural Mary Clark Thompson Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.
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