Joel Ernest Carman was born in St. Charles, Iowa in 1882, son of Jacob and Francis (McMahan) Carman.  He was raised on the family farm in Madison County, Iowa which happened to have one of the bridges that became famous in the book and movies "Bridges of Madison County". 

this spot reserved for his portrait

J. Ernest Carman (which is how he referred to be called) did his undergraduate studies at Simpson College, where he later established a scholarship to residents of Madison County.  He received his PhD at the University of Chicago in geology, and then joined the faculty of Ohio State University.  The rest of his story, I will leave to his granddaughter:

I'll take some time to put together thoughts about Grandaddy.  He was a brilliant geologist.  He championed what was then called the Gondwana theory in the 40s and 50s - I was taught it as a young child.  By the late 60s our college textbooks said it had been rejected, but by the 80s they were teaching it to my children in grade school - only now they call it plate tectonics.  He had one glass eye from being hit by a rock chip on a field trip (he always carried his rock pick with him).  When we drove from Ohio to Florida on family vacations he would go to the department library and check out those huge topographic maps - about 18" by 24" each - and each covering about 5-6 miles - for our entire route.  There would be hundreds of them and he would point every every building and geologic feature from Columbus to Sarasota.  Then when we got to the beach he would wake me up early every morning (on my vacation!) and we would walk the beach looking for sea shells.  He taught me all the Latin names.  The other kids thought I was nuts - what they called a left-handed whelk I knew as busycon perversum.  We had to go early because his bald head would burn later in the day.  He used to take a linen handkerchief and tie a knot in each of the four corners   and wear it as a cap to protect his scalp from the sun.  He also taught me the basics of freshman geography by the time I was four and taught me to read when I was three.  He always called me princess.
 

He was primarily a paleobiologist.  There is actually a type of prehistoric sloth named after him - something Carmanensis.  He was on a field trip once and stopped at a farmhouse to get a drink of water.  Their back door step was a huge slab of rock with a footprint in it.  It turned out to be the footprint of this sloth. He was very active and was one of the oldest men to climb Mount Blanc - the highest mountain in Europe.  He was nearly 70 at the time.  At the age of 70 he was painting the gutters on the roof and fell 2 1/2 stories onto a concrete sidewalk.  He broke most of his ribs, his collarbones,  etc. and was told he'd never walk again and probably never even sit up unaided.  He told them they didn't know what they were talking about and was up and walking unaided in about six weeks.  He never wore anything more than a brace made of some heavy mesh straps - no metal - no crutches or canes.

He looked very much like Woodrow Wilson only with less sense of humor.  His favorite saying over family dinners was "There's a lot of love and sympathy in this world, but not a lot of good gravy."

 

All in all a pretty intriguing character.

 

Tani