William King (geologist)

William King

William King (born April 22, 1809 in Sunderland , County Durham , north-east England , † June 24, 1886 in Taylor's Hill, Glenoir near Galway ) was a British geologist and mineralogist . Although he had never graduated, he was appointed to the Chair of Geology and Mineralogy in Ireland in 1849 at the newly established Queen's College, Galway, now the National University of Ireland, Galway .

In 1864 he introduced the name Homo neanderthalensis for the fossil Neandertal 1 , which was discovered in mid-August 1856 in a section of the Düssel in the Lower Bergisches Land , 13 kilometers east of Düsseldorf , called the Neandertal . King was the first scientist to name a new extinct species , closely related to anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ), based on fossil material.

Life

William King grew up in Sunderland and developed an early interest in natural history there ; however, after he went to school, his parents were unable to finance his academic studies. After training as a hardware dealer, he opened a bookstore in Sunderland in 1833, which was supported by the local wealthy people interested in natural history and literature. King had the self-study anatomy taught since childhood and minerals collected and fossils. He was therefore able to gain access to scientific circles interested in geology , so that in 1840 he was appointed curator of what is now the Great North Museum: Hancock called Natural History Museum in Newcastle-upon-Tyne ; In 1847 he gave up this activity after disputes with his employees. As a lecturer he taught geology at the local School of Medicine and wrote several publications in specialist journals, including a. about seal trees from the Carboniferous , about fossils of the Permian and the systematics of the cephalopods .

In 1849 King was appointed to Ireland to the recently established Chair of Geology and Mineralogy at Queen's College, Galway. The exact circumstances of how this appointment came about are no longer known, but it is believed that Henry Thomas de la Bèche - then director of the Ordnance Geological Survey and President of the Geological Society of London - became aware of the high quality of King's publications was. At that time, shortly after the height of the Great Famine , Galway was an extremely poor, depopulated and therefore unattractive Irish county . Nevertheless, King remained in Galway until his retirement in 1883 and then until the end of his life, which was also due to the fact that in 1873 his application for the Woodwardian Chair of Geology at the University of Cambridge despite advocates such as Adam Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison and John Phillips was unsuccessful.

His research and publications focused on the geology of Ireland (including the formation of the Burren ), the Permian fossils in England and - together with Thomas Henry Rowney, Professor of Chemistry at Queen's College, Galway - the so-called eozoa , supposed fossils of Living beings from the Permian that King & Rowney correctly interpreted as purely crystalline structures.

In 1852 he set up a geological museum at Queen's College from his private collection, today's James Mitchell Geology Museum . He also advised when the route for laying transatlantic cables was determined.

In 1870 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in Galway , the first to be awarded by his university. In 1882/83 King was also a professor of natural history .

William King was buried in Galway New Cemetery in 1886.

Dealing with the Neanderthals

William King's varied interests in natural history included not only fossils but also comparative human anatomy . As he himself reports, he had familiarized himself with the construction of the skulls of all the major races and also had access to an approximately 500-year-old skull from County Clare, Ireland . Thanks to this knowledge and knowledge of the then current specialist literature, he succeeded in a detailed analysis of the special features of the Neanderthal skull discovered in Germany.

In the period between 1857 and 1863, William King came into possession of an impression of the skull from the fossil Neandertal 1 , which was given to him by a “Mr. Gregory, of Golden Square, London ”. First in 1863 during the 33rd session of the British Association for the Advancement of Science , in a lecture to the Geological Section, and in the same and the following year in several technical papers he argued that the Neanderthal skull was because of its features and its embedding in the rock must have a considerable age and differ from the characteristics of all recent races sufficiently clearly so that it can be assigned to a new taxonomic unit. His proposal, published in 1864, was: Homo neanderthalensis . What is remarkable about King's argument is that in his analysis of the Neanderthal skull he quite naturally assumed that the recent human populations of all continents belong to a common species, Homo sapiens - that he represented a scientific doctrine that was by no means generally accepted at the time was.

Fonts (selection)

The Permian Fossils of England. The Palaeontographical Society, London 1850. Full text reproduction
The Neanderthal Skull. In: The Anthropological Review. Volume 1, No. 3, 1863, pp. 393–394, full text (PDF)
On the Neanderthal Skull, or Reasons for believing it to belong to the Clydian Period and to a species different from that represented by Man. In: British Association for the Advancement of Science, Notices and Abstracts for 1863. Part II, London 1864, pp. 81-82
with Thomas Henry Rowney: On the so-called "Eozoonal Rock". In: Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London. Volume 22, 1866, pp. 185-218, doi: 10.1144 / GSL.JGS.1866.022.01-02.13
with Thomas H. Rowney: On " Eozoon Canadense ". In: Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Volume 10, 1869, pp. 506–551, full text (PDF)
with Thomas Henry Rowney: An Old Chapter of the Geological Record, with a New Interpretation: or, Rock-Metamorphism (especially the Methylosed Kind) and its Resultant Imitations of Organisms. John Van Voorst, London 1881 full text (PDF; 6.55 MB)

literature

Sidney Lee: Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder & Co. , London 1892, p. 170
Frederic Boase: Modern English Biography. Netherton & Worth, Truro 1892-1921

Web links

University of Ireland, Galway ( Memento July 16, 2012 on the Internet Archive ): Short biography

Individual evidence

^ Place of birth according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and University of Ireland, Galway ( Memento of July 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ); according to Sidney Lee, Dictionary of National Biography (1892) and Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography (1892–1921) - both with reference to Nature , Volume 34, No. 870 of July 1, 1886, p. 200, doi: 10.1038 / 034199b0 - as well as the catalog of the Hamburg State and University Library (dump of May 14, 2012) he was born in Hartlepool . However, there is no reference to Hartlepool in Nature .
↑ William King: The Reputed Fossil Man of the Neanderthal. In: Quarterly Journal of Science. Volume 1, 1864, pp. 88–97, full text (PDF; 348 kB)
^ ^A ^b ^c John Murray et al .: The Contribution of William King to the Early Development of Palaeoanthropology. In: Irish Journal of Earth Sciences. Volume 33, 2015, pp. 1–16, doi: 10.3318 / ijes.2015.33.1
↑ Great North Museum: Hancock - Official Web Sites
↑ William King: The Reputed Fossil Man of the Neanderthal , p. 91
^ John Murray et al .: The Contribution of William King ... , p. 6
↑ William King: The Reputed Fossil Man of the Neanderthal , p 94. - James Reynolds Gregory (1832 to 1899) was a noted mineralogist, who ran a successful minerals trade.
^ William King: On the Neanderthal Skull, or Reasons for believing it to belong to the Clydian Period and to a species different from that represented by Man. In: British Association for the Advancement of Science, Notices and Abstracts for 1863, Part II. London, 1864, p. 81 f.

personal data
SURNAME	King, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British geologist and paleoanthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH	April 1809
PLACE OF BIRTH	Sunderland or Hartlepool
DATE OF DEATH	June 24, 1886
Place of death	Taylor's Hill, Glenoir near Galway

[1] Place of birth according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and University of Ireland, Galway ( Memento of July 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ); according to Sidney Lee, Dictionary of National Biography (1892) and Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography (1892–1921) - both with reference to Nature , Volume 34, No. 870 of July 1, 1886, p. 200, doi: 10.1038 / 034199b0 - as well as the catalog of the Hamburg State and University Library (dump of May 14, 2012) he was born in Hartlepool . However, there is no reference to Hartlepool in Nature .

[2] William King: The Reputed Fossil Man of the Neanderthal. In: Quarterly Journal of Science. Volume 1, 1864, pp. 88–97, full text (PDF; 348 kB)

[Murray_et_al_2015-3] A ^b ^c John Murray et al .: The Contribution of William King to the Early Development of Palaeoanthropology. In: Irish Journal of Earth Sciences. Volume 33, 2015, pp. 1–16, doi: 10.3318 / ijes.2015.33.1

[4] Great North Museum: Hancock - Official Web Sites

[5] William King: The Reputed Fossil Man of the Neanderthal , p. 91

[6] John Murray et al .: The Contribution of William King ... , p. 6

[7] William King: The Reputed Fossil Man of the Neanderthal , p 94. - James Reynolds Gregory (1832 to 1899) was a noted mineralogist, who ran a successful minerals trade.

[8] William King: On the Neanderthal Skull, or Reasons for believing it to belong to the Clydian Period and to a species different from that represented by Man. In: British Association for the Advancement of Science, Notices and Abstracts for 1863, Part II. London, 1864, p. 81 f.