W. Brian Harland

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Walter Brian Harland , called Brian Harland , (born March 22, 1917 in Scarborough , † November 1, 2003 in Cambridge ) was a British geologist and polar explorer. He researched the geology of the Arctic and was one of the first to publish on the extreme global glaciation in the Precambrian (see Snowball Earth ). He was also known as the editor of a manual on the geological timescale.

Life

Harland has been interested in geology since his youth in Yorkshire and collected fossils on the coast (for example he found remains of the Jurassic crocodile Steneosaurus). From 1935 he studied natural sciences and especially geology in Cambridge with the highest grades. His thesis was on seismological exploration of the geology of East Anglia. In 1938 he took part in an expedition to Spitzbergen , which aroused his fascination for the Arctic. During the Second World War he refused to do military service as a Quaker, worked on a farm and was professor of geology in Chengdu , China (now Chengdu University of Technology) from 1942 to 1946 . He later remained connected to the university and made friends with Joseph Needham in China . He then taught in Cambridge, first from 1946 as a demonstrator, from 1948 as a lecturer and from 1966 as a reader. As a professor, he organized regular excursions for geology students to Arran for over 30 years . From 1950 he was a Fellow of Gonville & Caius College, from 1984 as a Life Fellow.

In 1975 he was the founder of the Cambridge Arctic Shelf Program (CASP, from 1988 an independent non-profit organization) and until the 1980s led 29 expeditions, particularly to Svalbard (and was involved in the organization of many others in Cambridge). He was a supporter of the continental drift theory as early as the 1950s . He dealt with plate tectonic orogenesis and introduced the term transpression for oblique collision of plates. The term Iapetus Ocean also comes from him and Rodney Gayer (1972).

In 1976 he received the Lyell Medal and in 1968 the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. He was the editor of Geological Magazine for 30 years . From 1963 to 1979 he was honorary secretary of the Geological Society of London. He was editor from 1964 (up to the 4th edition 1990) of Geologic Time Scale and coordinated the information. He was the secretary of the International Geological Correlation Program.

In 1942 he married Elisabeth Lewis and had a son and two daughters.

Fonts

  • An outline of the structural geology of Spitsbergen, in GO Raasch, Geology of the Arctic, Volume 1, Toronto University Press 1961, 68-132
  • Published in: A Geologic Time Scale, Cambridge University Press, 4th edition 1990
  • Published in: The Phanerozoic Timescale, Geological Society of London, 1964
  • Editor with others: The Fossil Record, Geological Society of London 1967
  • with WT Horsfield: The West Spitsbergen Orogen, in AM Spencer, Mesozoic and Cenozoic Orogenic Belts, Geological Society Special Publ. 4, 1974, 747-756

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Harland, Evidence of late Precambrian glaciation and its significance. In: AEM Nairn, Problems in Palaeoclimatology, Interscience, London, 1964, pp. 119-149
  2. ↑ Harland, Critical evidence for a great infra-Cambrian glaciation, Geologische Rundschau 54, 1964, pp. 45-61
  3. ↑ Harland, MJS Rudwick, The great infra-Cambrian ice age, Scientific American, August 1964, 42-49
personal data
SURNAME Harland, W. Brian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Harland, Walter Brian (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British geologist and polar explorer
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Scarborough
DATE OF DEATH November 1, 2003
Place of death Cambridge