Andrew Cowper Lawson[1] (July 25, 1861 – June 16, 1952) was a Scots-born Canadian geologist who became professor of geology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the editor and co-author of the 1908 report on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake which became known as the "Lawson Report". He was also the first person to identify and name the San Andreas Fault in 1895, and after the 1906 quake, the first to delineate the entire length of the San Andreas Fault which previously had been noted only in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also named the Franciscan Complex after the Franciscan Order of the Catholic church whose missions used conscripted Native American labor to mine limestone in these areas.
In 1890, he left the Geological Survey of Canada to work as a consulting geologist in Vancouver. In October of the same year, he accepted a position as assistant professor of Mineralogy and Geology at the University of California in Berkeley. He became a full professor in 1892, and a professor emeritus from 1928 to his death on June 16, 1952.
The mineral Lawsonite is named for him, as is the Lawson Adit, originally a mining construction research tunnel on UC Berkeley's campus. During the Cold War, it was used to house special equipment to monitor Soviet nuclear tests. It is currently used to house seismological instruments.
^Fairchild, Herman LeRoy, 1932, The Geological Society of America 1888-1930, a Chapter in Earth Science History: New York, The Geological Society of America, 232 pp.
^Eckel, Edwin, 1982, GSA Memoir 155, The Geological Society of America – Life History of a Learned Society. Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America Memoir 155, 168 pp.ISBN0-8137-1155-X.
^McCoy, Esther (1960). Five California Architects. New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation. p. 20. ASINB000I3Z52W.
The California Earthquake of April 18, 1906: Report of the State Earthquake Investigation Commission, Andrew C. Lawson, chairman, Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 87, 2 vols. (1908) – Available online at this USGS webpage.
