Harold John Finlay
Harold John Finlay (born March 22, 1901 in Kumilla , † April 7, 1951 in Wellington ) was a New Zealand paleontologist and malacologist .
Finlay's parents were Baptists - missionaries from New Zealand and he was born in what was then India. As a child he had polio , which resulted in a lifelong walking disability. In 1906 his parents returned to New Zealand and he attended school in Dunedin . From 1918 he studied chemistry at the University of Otago with a bachelor's degree in 1921 and a master's degree in 1922. Even as a student, he was interested in paleontology and received a national research grant in paleontology after graduation. In spite of his walking difficulties, he put on a large collection of fossil and recent mollusks . In 1926 he received the Hamilton Memorial Prize and in 1927 a D.Sc. After that he was only employed sporadically, despite the reputation that he now enjoyed as a malacologist. He worked temporarily for the fisheries authority in marine research and for oil exploration, which is why he began to deal with microfossils ( foraminifera ), an area that had previously been neglected in New Zealand. In 1937 he became a micropalaeontologist with the Geological Survey of New Zealand. In the same year he married and the marriage had two daughters.
Finlay earned above all merits in the application of paleontology and micropaleontology in the stratigraphy of the younger rocks (about the last 100 million years, in the Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary ) of New Zealand.
In 1939 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and in 1941 received its Hector Memorial Prize.
He was a good pianist, composed orchestral and chamber music and occasionally gave music lessons at a college. Another passion was bridge, which he played on a professional level. His brother Martyn was Minister of Justice in New Zealand.
Web links
- GH Scott: Finlay, Harold John. In: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. 1998
- Literature by and about Harold John Finlay in the WorldCat bibliographic database
Individual evidence
- ^ Harold John Finlay, John Marwick : New Divisions of the New Zealand Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary. In: NZ Journ. Sci. Tech. Series B, Vol. 28, 1947, pp. 230-236
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Finlay, Harold John |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | New Zealand paleontologist and malacologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 22, 1901 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kumilla |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 7, 1951 |
| Place of death | Wellington |