Marland P. Billings

Marland Pratt Billings was an American structural geologist regarded as one of the leading authorities on North American geology. Educated at Roxbury Latin School and Harvard, where he took his doctorate in 1927, he joined the Harvard faculty in 1930 and stayed until he retired as emeritus professor in 1972, with a brief spell teaching at Bryn Mawr College. He mapped the bedrock of New Hampshire, wrote Structural Geology in 1942 and Geology of New Hampshire in 1956, and in the 1950s studied the rock exposed in tunnels built around Boston for water supply and drainage. He served as president of the Geological Society of America in 1959 and received the Penrose Medal in 1987. His letters in the 1940s helped set off the debate that ended with the closure of Harvard's geography department in 1948. He died in New Hampshire in 1996 at the age of 94.