Joseph Prestwich

Bust of Prestwich in the Oxford University Museum

Sir Joseph Prestwich FRS , (March 12, 1812 in Pensbury , Clapham , † June 23, 1896 in Shoreham , Kent ) was a British geologist and entrepreneur, known as an expert on the Tertiary and Quaternary and for the confirmation of stone tool finds from Boucher de Perthes in St. Acheul (a suburb of Amiens ), which proved the old age of the development of the hominini .

Life

Prestwich received his education in Paris and Reading before studying chemistry and natural philosophy at University College London . There he was an avid visitor to the geological and mineralogical collection of the university museum. In 1830 he began to work in the family's wine trade - a job that, surprisingly, he carried out in addition to his work as a geologist until 1872. This work meant that he had to travel extensively across the UK and across the English Channel in France and Belgium . On his travels he made numerous geological observations and sought the acquaintance of the geologists who worked there. In 1833 he became a member of the Geological Society of London .

Starting in the 1860s, Prestwich served with the Royal Coal Commission and the Royal Commission on the Metropolitan Water Supply . In 1870 he married Grace Anne McCall, the niece of his friend Hugh Falconer . After retiring from the wine trade, he was appointed to the chair of geology at the University of Oxford in 1874, which he held until his retirement in 1888. After retirement, he moved back to Darent Hulme, his house in Shoreham, where he continued to operate his geological studies until his death in 1896th

Act

Prestwich's early work reflected his frequent travels: it dealt with geology in the area around Gamrie in Banffshire , Scotland , and mammal remains in the area around Épernay in northern France. However, the two papers were not published until 1837. Prestwich made a name for himself as a geologist with his 1836 work on the geology of Coalbrookdale ( Geology of Coalbrookdale , with illustrations by John Morris ), the first monograph on an English coal mining district . It was based on research he had done in 1831 and 1832. From 1846 he turned to the tertiary deposits of the London Basin , which he classified and then correlated with deposits of the same age in England, France and Belgium . In 1858 he met at the urging Hugh Falconer in Abbeville with the archaeologist John Evans and traveled to St. Acheul, where Boucher de Perthes the discovery of flint - tools in the gravel deposits of the Somme reported -Tals and postulated as a great age of man had . This thesis was not without doubt accepted by the archaeologists of his time. Together with Evans, Prestwich examined the gravel pits of St. Acheul and was able to confirm the observations of de Perthes. Prestwich's report on the matter was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society for 1859/1860. Even if the scientific controversy about the significance of these finds continued for a long time, the confirmation of the findings by Prestwich and Evans was an important milestone in the study of human history.

From 1859 Prestwich wrote several articles about young, post- Pliocene Quaternary deposits, such as the loess of southern England and northern France and the spread of glacial deposits. After moving from the wine trade to the chair of geology, the number of his publications increased significantly. In addition to many articles - including on the geological conditions for the construction of a canal tunnel - he published a two-volume geological textbook in 1886 and 1887 with the title Geology, Chemical and Physical, Stratigraphical and Palaeontological . In view of his conviction, expressed in 1893, that large parts of Atlantic Western Europe and the Mediterranean coastal areas were flooded by huge megatsunamis at the end of the most recent Ice Age , with these stretches of land experiencing tectonic uplifts and subsidence, Prestwich was probably the last important exponent of catastrophic notions in 19th century geology.

Honors

Prestwich was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1853 and received its Royal Medal in 1865 “for his numerous and valuable contributions to the science of geology and in particular for his publications in the Philosophical Transactions on the general issue of river deepening and surface sedimentation in France and England, where human works appear together with the remains of extinct animals. ”After many years as treasurer, Prestwich was President of the Geological Society from 1870 to 1872. In 1896 he was promoted to Knight Bachelor .

Prestwich was well known outside of England too: he was one of the earliest members of the Société géologique de France and was appointed chairman of the meeting at their meeting in Boulogne in 1880. In 1885 he was elected a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences and was a member of numerous other European and American geological organizations. In 1888 he was unanimously elected chairman of the International Geological Congress in London.

The Prestwich Medal of the Geological Society of London is named and donated after him.

literature

• Obituary Notices of Fellows Deceased. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (1854-1905). 60, 1896, pp. I – xxxv, doi : 10.1098 / rspl.1896.0002 .
• HW ( His Wife , i.e. Grace Anne McCall): Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Prestwich, MA, DCL, FRS, FGS, formerly Professor of Geology in the University of Oxford. Written and edited by his wife. 8vo; xvi and 444 . William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London 1899 ( online version; master document with links to various formats ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary Notices, pp. Xii
2. ↑ ^{a b} Obituary Notices, p. Xiv
3. ^ Obituary Notices, pp. Xiii
4. ^ Joseph Prestwich, "On the Evidences of a Submergence of Western Europe and the Mediterranean Coasts at the Close of the Glacial or so-called Post-Glacial Period, and Immediately Preceding the Neolithic or Recent Period", in: PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS of the Royal Society, London 1893
5. ↑ Royal archive winners Prior to 1900. Royal Society, accessed December 20, 2009 . 
6. ^ Obituary Notices, p. Xv
7. ^ Past Presidents. (No longer available online.) The Geological Society of London, archived from the original on February 17, 2012 ; Retrieved December 21, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.