June 8, 1888

Albert Homer Purdue, who had worked on his family’s farm and had had little formal education until the age of twenty, entered Indiana State Normal School (later Indiana State University), where he earned a diploma. Purdue later studied at Purdue University where he worked with John Casper Branner, state geologist of Arkansas from 1887 to 1893, and ran a cleaning business with fellow geology student Herbert Clark Hoover. After becoming the first geology student to graduate from Stanford University in California, Purdue was given a position as professor of geology at Arkansas Industrial University (later the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, in Washington County). He was a renowned geologist and published many works on the geology of Arkansas and Tennessee.