W J McGee

W J McGee (1853–1912), who wrote his initials without periods, was an American geologist and anthropologist. Self-taught on an Iowa farm, he joined the United States Geological Survey in 1883 and worked on the glacial and coastal geology of the eastern states, then moved to the Bureau of American Ethnology, where he was ethnologist in charge from 1893 to 1903 and led the expeditions to the Seri of Sonora described in his monograph of 1898. A founder of the National Geographic Society and president of the American Anthropological Association, he devoted his last years to Theodore Roosevelt's conservation program and the Inland Waterways Commission.