Alwyn Williams

Sir Alwyn Williams (born June 8, 1921 in Aberdare , Wales , †  April 4, 2004 ) was a British geologist and paleontologist .

Williams studied at the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth , where he graduated in geology in 1939 and received his doctorate with a thesis on the Ordovician of Wales and the brachiopods occurring there . After two years with a Harkness scholarship at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC with the brachiopod expert G. Arthur Cooper , he became a lecturer at the University of Glasgow in 1950 and from 1954 at Queen's University Belfast , where he was also dean and in 1967 Vice Principal. In 1974 he succeeded Fred Shotton Lapworth professor of geology at the University of Birmingham and head of the geological faculty. In 1976 he went back to Glasgow, where he became a principal of the university, which he remained until 1988. During this time he fundamentally modernized the university and among other things introduced a department for computer science. After his time as principal, he moved to the newly established palaeobiology department of the university and researched in particular evidence of soft tissue in the fossils of brachiopods.

He was an expert on brachiopods, which he examined using techniques that were new at the time, such as electron microscopy. After being commissioned to do so at the International Brachiopod Congress in 1990, he coordinated the new edition of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology volumes dedicated to brachiopods , the first volume of which appeared in 1997. In 2000 he was honored at the International Brachiopod Congress in London for his 50 years of study in this field.

He became a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh , of which he was President from 1985 to 1988. He was a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences . In 2007, a building named after him was opened at the University of Glasgow, expanding the computer science department, which was particularly supported by Williams in his time as principal. He was interested in art and from 1979 to 1981 he was Chairman of the Committee on National Museums and Galleries in Scotland . A report prepared by this committee led to the creation of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

He was married to Joan Bevan since 1949, with whom he had a son and a daughter. In 1961 he received the Bigsby Medal and in 1973 the Murchison Medal of the Geological Society of London . In 1983 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor . In 2002 he received the Lapworth Medal of the Palaeontological Association , of which he was an honorary member.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary in the Guardian 2004