Alexander McKay

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Alexander McKay (born April 11, 1841 in Carsphairn , Kirkcudbrightshire , Scotland , † July 8, 1917 in Wellington , New Zealand ) was a Scottish-New Zealand geologist and mineralogist .

Early years

Alexander McKay was born on April 11, 1841 to the married couple Agnes MacClellan and her husband William Sloane McKay , a carpenter and wheelwright in Carsphairn . With a Calvinist education, he attended the village school until he was 11 years old. After that he assisted his father and only attended school in winter. In the summer he worked as a cowherd. During this time, his interest developed at the geology and mineralogy , learned the layers of rocks know, searching for ores in the Rhinns of Kells , a mountain range in his home.

New Zealand

On July 3, 1863 McKay left his Scottish homeland from Glasgow . It can be assumed that the news of the gold rush in Otago drew him to New Zealand. On the Helenslea he reached Campbelltown , later the Bluff , in September 1863, and worked for two years in the gold fields of Otago and Wakamarina in the Marlborough region . After a short trip to the gold fields of New South Wales and Queensland , he returned to New Zealand in 1866 to geologically investigate the southwest of Mackenzie Country for four years . In which order this happened is not known. During this time he met the German-New Zealand geologist Julius von Haast for the first time .

On August 24, 1868 McKay married his wife, Susannah Barnes , who later lived in Wellington while McKay was traveling. The marriage resulted in two sons.

In 1870 he met Haast again and was hired by him for geological investigations in the coal fields of Ashley George and Shag Point in northern Otago . In their further collaboration, they looked for fossils of reptiles in the Waipara River area in northern Canterbury . Was also McKay in the excavations of Moa -Skeletten in Point Cave in Sumner , now a suburb of Christchurch , involved.

In 1972 James Hector , director of the Colonial Museum and New Zealand Geological Survey , became aware of McKay's Waipara fossil collection at the Canterbury Museum . Hector won McKay over for further digs in Haumuri Bluff near Kaikoura . After completing his job , McKay went back to his wife in Wellington in April 1873 and a little later took on a permanent position for the fossil collection of the Geological Survey . In 1876 he was appointed geologist for excavations and in 1885 was appointed assistant to a state geologist. In 1892 he moved to the Mines Department as a mining geologist and was appointed to a state geologist. He held this position until his retirement in 1906.

McKay's contribution to geology in New Zealand lay in his work in the field of structural geology . He developed theories of orogeny in New Zealand, which were initially controversial but were later confirmed by New Zealand's respected geologists.

After his wife Susanna died in the year of his retirement, McKay remarried on June 3, 1907. His second wife, Adelaid Doutson , would survive him. Alexander McKay died on July 8, 1917 in Kelburn , Wellington . In his honor, the northern group named in 1961 carried out until 1962 campaign as part of the New Zealand Geological Survey Antarctic Expedition who McKay cliff in Antarctica after him.

photography

In the late 1880s, McKay became increasingly interested in photography and experimented with camera designs , as well as the development of telephoto and macro lenses . To do this, he cut off the bottoms of bottles and used them to enlarge or reduce the size. Some of the photographs he created can still be seen today in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington .

McKay Hammer Award

The Geological Society of New Zealand has presented the McKay Hammer Award since 1957 . It is given annually in honor of Alexander McKay to New Zealand authors who have contributed something outstanding to the geology of New Zealand with their work in the past three years .

literature

  • D. Graham Bishop : The Real McKay - the remarkable life of Alexander McKay, geologist . Otago University Press , Dunedin 2008, ISBN 978-1-877372-22-3 (English).
  • Obituary - Alexander Mckay . In: Royal Society of New Zealand (Ed.): Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute for the Year 1917 . Volume 50 . Wellington July 15, 1918 ( online [accessed December 16, 2015]).
  • Geert Jan Lensen : McKay, Alexander . In: Alexander Hare McLintock (Ed.): An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand . Wellington 1966 ( online [accessed December 15, 2015]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Rhinns of Kells . Needle Sports , accessed July 3, 2012 .
  2. ↑ Russian? warship, Wellington Harbor, (ca 1890s) . National Library of New Zealand , accessed July 4, 2012 (Photographed by Alexander McKay under the help name of so-called telephoto lenses).
  3. ^ Kelburn School under construction, 1910-1917 . National Library of New Zealand , accessed July 4, 2012 (Photographed by Alexander McKay under the help name of so-called telephoto lenses).
  4. ↑ GSNZ Awards . Geoscience Society of New Zealand , accessed July 4, 2012 .
personal data
SURNAME McKay, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish-New Zealand geologist and mineralogist
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1841
PLACE OF BIRTH Carsphairn
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 1917
Place of death Wellington