Arthur Lewis Hall

Arthur Lewis Hall (born January 10, 1872 in Birmingham , † August 13, 1955 in Pretoria ) was a British-South African geologist .

Life

The son of an Anglican clergyman grew up temporarily in Germany, attended schools in Freiburg, Bonn, Schwehn and Kassel and studied from 1891 at University College Bristol and at the University of Cambridge (Gonville and Caius College) with a bachelor's degree in 1899 with top grades in the tripos for science. He also received the Harkness Fellowship in Geology from Cambridge University. He mapped with Phillip Lake in Wales, was a teacher at Dulwich College and studied the geology of Great Britain, Ireland and the Alps. He married in 1900 and from 1902 was a geologist in the land survey of the Transvaal colony in South Africa, which had just emerged from the Second Boer War . First he mapped under H. Kynaston in the area of ​​Pretoria. Despite difficult initial conditions, he mapped around 40,000 square kilometers in the first eight years, mostly on foot. After the founding of the South African Union in 1910, he continued his work in the geological survey of South Africa until his retirement in 1932, from 1915 as Assistant Director of the Geological Survey of South Africa. After his retirement he continued to work scientifically and as a consulting geologist.

In addition to geological mapping, he explored the mineral resources (tin, asbestos, gold, magnesite, corundum, mica, other minerals), especially in the Bushveld complex , and is known for petrographic and stratigraphic studies of South Africa. He introduced the Swaziland system of the Archean with the division into Onverwacht, Moodies and Jamestown series. Extensive bibliographies on South African geology come from him. He was also responsible for the geological department of the Transvaal Museum and made his collections available to the South African Museum in Cape Town.

In 1922 he led the members of the Shaler Memorial Expedition (including Gustaaf Adolf Frederik Molengraaff ) through the Bushveld complex in Sekukuniland. In 1929 he was general secretary of the 15th International Geological Congress in Pretoria.

In 1913/14 he was President of the Geological Society of South Africa, whose first recipient of the David Draper Memorial Medal he was in 1932. In 1925 he was President of the South African Geographical Society. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Geological Society of London (1900), whose Murchison Medal he received in 1930. In 1934 he became a corresponding member of the Geological Society of America . He was an honorary member of the Geological Association and received a PhD (D. Sc.) From Cambridge University while in South Africa.

Fonts

• The geology of the Murchison Range, 1912
• The geology of the Barberton gold mining district, including the adjoining portion of northern Swaziland, 1918
• The Transvaal Drakensberg, South African Geographical Journal, 1925 (Presidential Address)
• The Bushveld Igneous Complex, with special reference to the Eastern Transvaal, excursion guide, 15th Int. Geology Congress Pretoria 1929
• Analyzes of rocks, minerals, ores, coal, soils and waters from southern Africa, Memoir of the Geological Survey 32, 1938
• The Bushveld Igneous Complex of the central Transvaal, 1932
• with GAF Molengraaff: The Vredefort mountain land in the southern Transvaal and the northern Orange Free State, Amsterdam, 1925
• A bibliography of South African geology, Pretoria: Geological Survey, Memoirs No. 18 (1922), no. 22 (1924), no. 25 (1927), no. 27 (1931), no. 30 (1937).

Web links

• Biographical Database of Southern African Science