William George Fearnsides

William George Fearnsides (born November 10, 1879 in White Hall, Horbury , Yorkshire , † May 15, 1968 in Sheffield ) was a British geologist who mainly dealt with economic geology.

Fearnsides, known to most of his colleagues by the name Bones , went to Wheelwright Grammar School in Dewsbury and studied on a scholarship at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University , where he graduated from the Tripos exams in science in 1900 and 1901 with top marks. From 1904 to 1915 he was a fellow of his college in Cambridge and from 1908 lecturer in natural sciences and from 1909 demonstrator in petrology . From 1913 until his retirement in 1945 he was the first professor of geology at the University of Sheffield, founded in 1905 .

In Cambridge he investigated metallic alloys and the geology of the lower Paleozoic (Silurian, Ordovician) especially in Wales. In Sheffield he dealt a lot with economic applications of geology, in particular with coalology and in this context with the carbon of Great Britain, especially in the Midlands . During the First World War he dealt intensively with the development of new raw material sources in Great Britain and also began to deal with questions such as the behavior of refractory materials for blast furnaces, for which he set up a separate department at the University of Sheffield. He also dealt with hydrogeology (water supply), petroleum geology (for which he researched in India and Burma), ore deposits (for example, manganese ore deposits in Northern Rhodesia in 1956 ).

After the nationalization of the English coal mines from 1947 to 1958, he was a consulting geologist for the National Coal Board for the West Midlands region and oversaw extensive new prospecting work during this time.

He was a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1932 . He served on the Council of the Royal Society in 1936/37, on the Council of the British Association for the Advancement of Science from 1935 to 1945 (and President of Section C in 1933), was Vice President from 1938 to 1940 and 1945 to 1947, and President of the Geological Society from 1943 to 1954 of London .

In 1932 he received the Murchison Medal , in 1917 the Greenwell Medal of the North England Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and the Bessemer Prize of the Society of Engineers. In 1913 he received a gold medal from the Surveyors Institution. In 1946 he became an Honorary Fellow of Sidney Sussex College and he was an honorary member of the Institute of Mining Engineers. 1934/5 he was President of the Yorkshire Geological Society.

His son-in-law was the paleontologist Oliver Bulman .

literature

• Obituary in Proc. Yorkshire Geological Society, Volume 37, 1968, p. 99, online, pdf

Web links

• Fearnsides Collection, Sheffield University Library