The 16th International Geological Congress, Washington, 1933

Abstract

In 1933, the International Geological Congress (IGC) returned to the United States of America (USA) for its sixteenth meeting, forty-two years after the 5 th IGC convened in Washington. The Geological Society of America and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) supplied the major part of the required extra-registration funding after the effects of the Great Depression influenced the 72 th U.S. Congress not to do so. A reported 1, 182 persons or organizations, representing fifty-four countries, registered for the 16 th IGC and thirty-four countries sent 141 official delegates. Of the total number of registrants, 665 actually attended the meeting; 500 came from the USA; and fifteen had participated in the 5 th IGC. The 16 th Meeting convened in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Building from 22 to 29 July. The eighteen half-day scientific sections-orogenesis (four), major divisions of the Paleozoic (three), miscellaneous (three), batholiths and related intrusives (two), arid-region geomorphic processes and products (one), fossil man and contemporary faunas (one), geology of copper and other ore deposits (one), geology of petroleum (one), measuring geologic time (one), and zonal relations of metalliferous deposits (one)-included 166 papers, of which fifty (including several of the key contributions) appeared only by title. The Geological Society of Washington, the National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Bureau of Mines hosted or contributed to evening presentations or receptions. Twenty-eight of the 16 th IGC's thirty new guidebooks and one new USGS Bulletin aided eight pre-meeting, seven during-meeting, and four post-meeting field trips of local, regional, or national scope. The remaining two new guidebooks outlined the USA's structural geology and its stratigraphic nomenclature. The 16 th IGC published a two-volume monograph on the world's copper resources (1935) and a two-volume report of its proceedings (1936).