Leonard Johnston Wills

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Leonard Johnston "Jack" Wills (born February 27, 1884 in Erdington , Birmingham , † December 12, 1979 in the District Bromsgrove ) was a British geologist and paleontologist.

Life

Wills was the son of a factory owner. His great-uncle Alfred Wills was formerly President of the Alpine Club. From 1903 he studied geology at King's College, Cambridge University . Thanks to good grades in the Tripos exams (1906, 1907) for natural sciences, he became a fellow of King's College in 1909, which he was until 1915. In the same year he began mapping for the Geological Survey of Great Britain in Wales. In 1907 he received a Harkness Scholarship and in 1909 the Walsingham Medal in Cambridge. In 1910 he received his Masters degree from Cambridge (where he also received a D. Sc. In 1928). In 1913 he became a lecturer at the University of Birmingham , where he also received a Ph. D. in 1920. In 1932 he took up a position as professor and head of the Geological Institute as the successor to William Bolton . In 1949 he retired, but continued his research into old age.

He began his research by describing the Keuper sediments at Bromsgrove in the Midlands and their fossils. One of his areas of interest were fossil land-dwelling arthropods such as scorpions of the Triassic or Eurypterids of the Carboniferous. In addition to the Midlands, he also dealt with the geology of the Severn Valley (Ironbridge Gorge) and his interest in the geology of the Midlands stretched to the Quaternary (such as the ice reservoir Lake Lapworth ). But he is known for his books on the geological development ( paleogeography ) of Great Britain and his monograph on coal deposits in Great Britain.

In 1936 he received the Lyell Medal and in 1954 the Wollaston Medal . In 1976 he became an Honorary Fellow of the Geological Society of London .

He had been married to Maud Janet Ewing since 1910, with whom he had two children. In 1926 he acquired Farley Cottage in Bromsgrove . The sale later funded the Fields Study Council's Leonard Wills Field Center at Nettlecombe Court, Somerset .

Fonts

  • Worcestershire. Cambridge University Press 1911, online version
  • On the Fossiliferous Lower Keuper Rocks of Worcestershire with Descriptions of some of the Plants and Animals discovered therein. Proc. Geologists Association, Vol. 21, 1910, pp. 249-331
  • An Outline of the Palaeogeography of the Birmingham Country. Proc. Geologistis Assoc., Vol. 46, 1935, pp. 211-246
  • British Triassic Scorpions. British Palaentolographical Society, 1947
  • Palaeogeological Map of the Palaeozoic Floor below the Permian and Mesozoic Formations in England and Wales. Geological Society 1973
  • Physiographical Evolution of Britain. Edward Arnold, 1929
  • The Palaeogeography of the Midlands. Liverpool University Press / Hodder & Stoughton, 1948
  • A Palaeogeographical Atlas of the British Isles. Blackie 1951
  • Concealed Coalfields. Blackie, 1956
  • A Palaeogeological Map of the Lower Palaeozoic Floor below the cover of Upper Devonian, Carboniferous and Later Formations. Geological Society of London, 1978

literature

  • RJ Cleevely: World palaeontological collections. British Museum (Natural History): Mansell Pub., London; Distributed in the US and Canada by HW Wilson Co., New York, 1983, p. 312.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lapworth Museum of Geology: Wills and Shotton Archives . Retrieved August 3, 2012.
  2. ^ LJ Wills: The Development of the Severn Valley in the Neighborhood of Iron-Bridge and Bridgnorth . In: Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society . 80, 1924, pp. 274-308. doi : 10.1144 / GSL.JGS.1924.080.01-04.15 . Retrieved August 27, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Wills, Leonard Johnston
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wills, Jack
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British geologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Erdington , Birmingham
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 1979
Place of death District Bromsgrove