Ira S. Allison

Ira Shimmin Allison (16 March 1895 – 31 May 1990), was an American geologist best known for studying the US state of Oregon's prehistoric lakes and waterways.

Allison is the namesake for Lake Allison, because he was the first person to identify and correlate Willamette silt soil in 1953 with soils at the former lake bed of Lake Lewis in eastern Washington.

Personal life Ira Allison was born on March 16, 1895, in Gardner, Illinois to John and Eva (né Shimmin) Allison, In 1921 he married his lifelong partner, Sadie Gilchrist in San Francisco, California. In 1928 he moved to Corvallis, Oregon, where he resided until his death.

He died of natural causes at his home in Corvallis, Oregon at the age of 95. He was buried in his home state of Illinois.

Academia Allison's started working at the University of Minnesota in 1920 as an assistant professor, teaching until 1928 and receiving a doctorate in Geology in 1924/5. In addition, he worked at the University of Chicago as an instructor in 1922 and 1923. Some of his other references to the prehistoric lakes of Oregon include a 1945 article published in Geological Society of America Bulletin. about Summer Lake, and a later correction to that paper in 1966 published in the same journal. He participated as part of the leadership of the 8th annual biology colloquium.

After his retirement from OSC, he co-authored the 7th edition of McGraw Hill Education's Geology: The Science of a Changing Earth with David F. Palmer, published in 1980.