Peter Lesley

American geologist (1819–1903)

Peter Lesley (September 17, 1819 – June 1, 1903), later known as J. Peter Lesley, was an American geologist.

Peter Lesley was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on September 17, 1819. It is recorded by Sir Archibald Geikie that he was christened Peter after his father and grandfather, and at first wrote his name Peter Lesley, Jr., but, disliking that forename, he eventually transformed his signature by putting the J. of Junior at the beginning. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1838, where he was trained for the ministry. Subsequently, he spent three years assisting Henry D. Rogers in the first geological survey of Pennsylvania. He later served as the Society's secretary and librarian from 1858 until 1885, and during that time prepared a catalogue of its library in three volumes (1863, 1866, and 1878). He was also a member of various other scientific societies, and was one of the original members of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1884 he was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Lesley was a proponent of the high antiquity of humankind; "My own belief is but the reflection of the growing sentiment of the whole geological world [ ] that our race has been upon the earth for hundreds of thousands of years."

His wife, Susan Inches Lesley (1823 1904), was the daughter of Judge Joseph Lyman, of Northampton, Massachusetts, and Anne Jean Lyman (née Robbins), daughter of Edward Robbins. She married Prof. Lesley in 1849, and devoted herself to the work of organized charities in Philadelphia. She published Memoirs of Mrs. Anne J. Lyman (Cambridge, 1876; 2d ed., entitled Recollections of My Mother, Boston, 1886). The couple's daughter was the painter Margaret Lesley Bush Brown, whose first job was creating geological models for her father. Peter Lesley died, aged 83, from a stroke at his home in Milton, Massachusetts on June 1, 1903.