George W. Bain Papers

George W. Bain was a geologist, Amherst College professor and leading expert on uranium and marble. He was born in Quebec and educated at McGill University and Columbia University, where he received a doctorate in 1927. Bain was hired as a geology instructor at Amherst College in 1926 and was active on the faculty until 1966. During World War II, as a consulting geologist to the Manhattan Project under General Leslie Groves, Bain located what proved to be the world’s largest uranium deposit in the Rand region of South Africa. For his wartime service he received the War Department Medal for Exceptional Service. In 1946 he was named to the Baruch Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission. Bain also served as a consulting geologist to the Vermont Marble Company as well as to many other companies and governments. At Amherst College, Professor Bain was chairman of the Department of Mineralogy and Geology for many years and director of the Pratt Museum. He was the author of many scientific articles on the structural geology of ore deposits and useful minerals, and had a special interest in the geology of the Northern Connecticut River Valley. In 1976 he published, with Howard A. Meyerhoff, The Flow of Time in the Connecticut Valley: Geological Imprints. He was married to Anne (Kahrs) Bain, who died in 1984. Bain died on June 10, 1991.