William Elgin Swinton

William Elgin Swinton (born September 30, 1900 in Kirkcaldy , † June 12, 1994 in Toronto ) was a British vertebrate paleontologist .

Swinton graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1922. During his studies he was President of the University's Geological Society, studied marsupials from South Australia and was involved in expeditions to Svalbard (where he studied Mesozoic clams). From 1924 he was curator for fossil amphibians, reptiles and birds at the Natural History Museum London. In doing so, he earned a reputation as one of the leading popularizers of dinosaurs in Britain. He wrote a popular book about dinosaurs (1934) and made sure that it was included in the lessons of school children (on one occasion he also showed the future Queen Elizabeth II with her sister through the collections), modernized the exhibitions, gave many lectures for laypeople and often appeared on television after the Second World War (in which he worked for the naval secret service, most recently in the rank of Lieutenant-Commander). Since 1932 he was a member ( Fellow ) of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

After retiring from the Natural History Museum in 1961, he became director of the Biology Department (Life Science) of the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada and, two years later, director of the entire museum, which he remained until 1966. He was also a tenured professor at the University of Toronto (Massey College).

As a paleontologist, he excavated worldwide (South Africa, Mexico, Canada, USA, India, Georgia and others) and published over 200 scientific papers. He received his PhD in Glasgow in 1930.

He was secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (and its president in 1954), president of the Museums Association and editor of the Museums Journal and the Proceedings of the Geological Association. In 1959 he received the Darwin Medal of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

Swinton had a wide range of interests and, for example, also directed the theater group at the Natural History Museum.

Fonts

• The Dinosaurs - a short history of a great group of extinct reptiles, London: T. Murby & Co., 1934
• Dinosaurs, Allen and Unwin 1970
• Dinosaurs, British Museum 1962
• with others: Geology and the Museum, Oxford University Press 1941
• The Story of Prehistoric Animals, Rathbone Books 1961
• The Wonderful World of Prehistoric Animals, Garden City Books 1961, London: MacDonald 1969
• Animals before Adam, London: Phoenix House 1961
• Digging for Dinosaurs, Doubleday 1962
• Giants past and present, London: Hale 1966
• Fossil Birds, Handbook Museum Natural History, 3rd edition 1975
• Fossil Amphibians and Reptiles, Handbook Museum Natural History, 3rd edition 1962
• Geology and Paleontology of Kaiso bone beds, Uganda Geological Survey, Entebbe 1926

Web links

• Alan Charig, obituary in The Independent, June 28, 1994
• Biography at Oxford DNB, by Chris McGowan and Anita McConnell

Individual evidence

1. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed April 14, 2020 .