Wayne L. Hamilton ’58

Wayne L. Hamilton ’58, Ph.D., died September 19, 2024. Wayne was born in Kanab, Utah, at the north rim of the Grand Canyon, where his dad worked for the National Park Service. Growing up, Wayne lived near Saratoga Historical Park in New York State, Natches Trace in Mississippi, and Yellowstone Park in Wyoming. At Dartmouth he was active in DOC and the Mountaineering Club, was a disk jockey for WDCR and a brother at Phi Kappa Psi (where he played the accordion at parties). During school breaks he worked as a Montana smoke jumper, a Yellowstone fire lookout, and in a silver mine in Mexico. Wayne majored in geology and graduated in 1959, when he reported for Army basic training and was assigned to research laboratories in Illinois, Greenland, and Alaska. In 1962 he married Margot and moved to Florida as a researcher at the University of Miami, followed by a move to the Ohio State Institute of Polar Studies, where he earned a Ph.D. in geology. Wayne’s career was as a geology researcher, professor, naturalist, law enforcement ranger, and geological mapmaker and included working in Zion National Park, Yellowstone, and Alaska. Along the way he authored about 150 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and a popular book on the geology of Zion National Park. Margot survives him, along with two sons, seven grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.