Edgar Roscoe Cumings was a long-time chair of the Geology Department of Indiana University from 1904 to 1942. He arrived at IU in 1898, after doing graduate work at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He later took a leave of absence to obtain his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1903. He and his students studied the paleontology of Indiana and began building the IU Paleontology Collection in earnest. Cumings notably led work on the Cincinnatian (Late Ordovician) of Indiana, the Silurian reefs in the northern part of the state, and on the fauna of the Salem Limestone. Cumings was originally from Ohio and was married to Frances L. Cumings, originally of Pennsylvania. They had two children, Edith K. and Edgar C. Cumings.