Jules Marcou

Jules Marcou (1824 to 1898) was a French-Swiss-American geologist. Born in Salins in the Jura department of France, he was educated at Besançon and at the Collège Saint Louis in Paris, and travels through Switzerland taken to recover his health led him to devote himself to natural science. There he met Jules Thurmann, who introduced him to Louis Agassiz, and in 1845 the two worked on a geological survey of the Jura Mountains. In 1846 he became assistant in the mineralogical department of the Sorbonne and classified its collection of fossils. In 1847 he went to North America as traveling geologist for the Jardin des Plantes, and in 1848 he joined Agassiz in Boston. In 1853 he published a Geological Map of the United States and the British Provinces of North America and served as geologist of the Pacific Railroad Survey along the 35th parallel, becoming the first geologist to cross the United States.