Professor John Casper Branner (4 July 1850–1 March 1922)

American geologist. Branner was born in New Market, Tennessee. He studied at Cornell College in Ithaca, New York, under geology professor Charles F. Hartt. At Cornell he developed a life-long interest in Brazil and wrote his bachelor’s thesis "On the fibro-vascular bundles in palms," receiving his BS degree in 1882. He was appointed as state geologist of Arkansas in 1887, leaving in 1893 to become professor of Geology at Leland Stanford Junior University, establishing the Department of Geology there. He published on wide-ranging subjects including ants as geological agents, fish taxonomy and glaciation. Branner was a charter member and president (1911-1914) of the Seismological Society of America that was founded after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Branner was an original fellow of the Geological Society of America, serving as its president in 1904. He died in Palo Alto, California, aged 71.