Geological Society of America Election of 1921: Attack on Candidacy of Charles Schuchert for the Presidency

During the spring of 1921 a "rump" ticket for President and Vice-President of the Geological Society of America, for 1922, in opposition to the regular presidential candidate, Charles Schuchert, was put forward by petition of 68 fellows of the Society. The attempt failed, partly because the gentlemen proposed as substitutes for the "regular" ticket refused to stand for election. Several fellows participated in the petition drive, but the energizing force and drafter of the petition was Edward O. Ulrich, who took pains to disguise the centrality of his role in the process. In retrospect the event appears to have expressed Ulrich's jealousy of Schuchert and his anger for Schuchert's refusal to adopt Ulrich's Ozarkian system in his publications. The "rump"' ticket episode destroyed what then remained of the former close personal and professional relations between these two great scientists and former friends.