James Dwight Dana - Publications

Publications

Dana's best known books were his System of Mineralogy (1837), his Manual of Mineralogy (1848), and his Manual of Geology (1863). A bibliographical list of his writings shows 214 titles of books and papers, beginning in 1835 with a paper on the conditions of Vesuvius in 1834. His reports on Zoophytes, on the Geology of the Pacific Area, and on Crustacea, summarizing his work on the Wilkes Expedition, appeared from 1846 onwards. Other works included Manual of Mineralogy (1848), afterwards entitled Manual of Mineralogy and Lithology (ed. 4, 1887); and Corals and Coral Islands] (1872; revised ed. 1890). In 1887, Dana revisited the Hawaiian Islands, and the results of his further investigations were published in a quarto volume entitled Characteristics of Volcanoes (1890).

The Manual of Mineralogy by J. D. Dana became a standard college text, and has been continuously revised and updated by a succession of editors including W. E. Ford (13th-14th eds., 1912–1929), Cornelius S. Hurlbut (15th-21st eds., 1941–1999), and beginning with the 22nd by Cornelis Klein. The 23rd edition is now in print under the title Manual of Mineral Science (Manual of Mineralogy) (2007), revised by Cornelis Klein and Barbara Dutrow.

Dana's System of Mineralogy has also been revised, the 6th edition (1892) being edited by his son Edward Salisbury Dana. A 7th edition was published in 1944, and the 8th edition was published in 1997 under the title Dana's New Mineralogy, edited by R. V. Gaines et al.

Dana published a number of manuscripts in an effort to reconcile scientific findings with the Bible between 1856 and 1857 and which are called Science and the Bible.