William P. Blake

William Phipps Blake was an American geologist, mining consultant, and educator. He was the first college trained chemist to work full-time for a United States chemical manufacturer (1850) and served as a geologist with the Pacific Railroad Survey of the Far West (1853–1856), where he observed and detailed a theory on erosion by wind-blown sand on the geologic formations of southern California, one of his many scientific contributions. He started several western mining enterprises that were premature, including a mining magazine in the 1850s and the first school of mines in the Far West in 1864.