William Lonsdale

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William Lonsdale (born September 9, 1794 in Bath , † November 11, 1871 in Bristol ) was an English geologist and paleontologist who has made a name for himself in the study of fossil corals and the geology of southern England.

Life

Lonsdale was raised for a position in the British Army. In 1810 he was enlisted as an ensign in the 4th Regiment, the King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment . He took part in the battles of Salamanca and Waterloo during the Napoleonic Wars on the Iberian Peninsula ( Peninsular War ) . After both battles, he was honored and resigned with the rank of lieutenant .

After active service, he lived in Batheaston for a few years and began to study geology and palaeontology , collecting fossils and lecturing at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution . He subsequently became an honorary curator of the natural history department of the institution's museum. He worked there until 1829 when he took the post of Assistant Secretary and Curator of the Geological Society of London at Somerset House . He stayed there until his health-related retirement in 1842.

Lonsdale was a skilled organizer alongside his research. Roderick Murchison , the founding father of the Geological Society, described Lonsdale's ability to advise the society on every hidden and difficult matter in the President's address in 1843, and highlighted his skills as an editor of the Society's publications. In 1846 he was awarded the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society.

Lonsdale spent his later years withdrawn, he died on November 11, 1871 in Bristol.

Act

1829 Lonsdale presented the Geological Society his work On the Oolitic District of Bath ( The Oolith -Distrikt of Bath ) before, a work he had begun in 1827th Subsequently, at the instigation of the Geological Society, he extended his investigations to similar rocks in Gloucestershire , the results of which he presented in 1832. He drew the boundaries of the rock formations he had mapped on maps in the usual English one-inch-to-a-mile format , thus creating the first detailed geological maps of England after William Smith .

His special focus was on the study of corals , so that he became the leading authority in the field in England. He described fossil corals from the Tertiary and Cretaceous North America and from older layers of England and Russia . In 1837 he came to the conclusion, based on the study of fossils from South Devon , that the limestones in which they were found belonged neither in the Carboniferous nor in the Silurian , but occupied a mediating position between them. This idea was picked up by Sedgwick and Murchison in 1839 and may have been the basis on which they created their new system , the Devonian .

Lonsdale in this regard, in 1840 picked essay Notes on the Age of the Limestones of South Devonshire ( Remarks on the age of the limestones of South Devonshire ) was in the same band of the Transactions of the Geological Society published the Sedgwick and Murchison On the Physical Structure of Devonshire ( About the physical constitution of Devonshire ) contained. In it the authors write that they had come to the conclusion of Lonsdale, without hesitation to the five sections of its geological profile of North Devon could apply, and also on the slate of Cornwall .

literature

  • Stella Whyberd Pierce: Lonsdale, William (1794-1871) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . 2004.
  • Lonsdale, William . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 16 : L - Lord Advocate . London 1911, p. 987 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).

References and comments

  1. ^ Transactions of the Geological Society, Series 2, Volume III
  2. ↑ one inch to a mile , a scale of 1: 63,360
personal data
SURNAME Lonsdale, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English geologist and paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 9, 1794
PLACE OF BIRTH Bath
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 1871
Place of death Bristol