Theodore Jesse Hoover

Theodore Jesse Hoover (born Jan. 28, 1871, West Branch, Iowa, U.S.—died Feb. 4, 1955, near Santa Cruz, Calif.) was an American mining engineer, naturalist, educator, and the elder brother of U.S. Pres. Herbert Hoover (author of this biography).

Hoover was the oldest of three children born to Jesse Clark Hoover, a village blacksmith and dealer in agricultural machinery, and Huldah Randall Minthorn Hoover, a teacher and Quaker minister. He was educated at Friends Pacific Academy, a Quaker school in Newberg, Ore., and at Penn College in Iowa. He received an A.B. degree in geology and mining from Stanford University in 1901. From 1903 to 1919 he was manager or consulting engineer in the gold mines of California, western Australia, Mexico, and Alaska; was an engineer or administrator of lead and silver mines in Burma and of copper mines in Finland and Russia; and had offices in London and San Francisco.

In 1919 he returned to Stanford University as a professor of mining and metallurgy, serving as dean of the school of engineering from 1925 until his retirement in 1936. Thereafter he lived at his ranch (the Rancho del Oso) in Santa Cruz county, Calif. As a writer, conservationist, and naturalist, he directed a definitive study of the life cycle of the Pacific Coast steelhead trout, assisted by the California fish and game commission. He was the author of Concentrating Ores by Flotation (1912), Economics of Mining (1933), and The Engineering Profession (1941) and of numerous articles in technical publications. He was a member of the American Society of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers and a founding member of the Cooper Ornithological Society.

In 1905 Hoover Lake in Santa Clara county, Calif., was named after him. He explored and mapped the area around the lake during the summers of 1904 and 1905 while serving as manager of the Standard Consolidated Mines. Also named in his honour is the Theodore J. Hoover National Preserve in northern Santa Cruz county. The preserve is noted for containing one of the rarest coastal marsh habitats in central California and sheltering a variety of rare and endangered species.