William Thomas Blanford

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William Thomas Blanford

William Thomas Blanford (born October 7, 1832 in London , † June 23, 1905 ibid) was an English geologist , zoologist and naturalist .

Live and act

Blanford was first educated at private schools in Brighton and from 1846 to 1848 in Paris in business. He then went to Italy for two years and worked in a trading house in Civitavecchia . After returning to England, however, he entered the newly established Royal School of Mines (now Imperial College ) in 1851 , which his younger brother Henry F. Blanford, later head of the Meteorological Bureau of India, was already attending. During his training, he spent a year at the Bergakademie in Freiberg . In 1854 his training was over. At the same time as his brother, he joined the Geological Survey for India in the same year .

Initially, William Thomas Blanford was primarily concerned with coal mining and worked in the Raniganj mining area near Bombay . Near another coal field near Talchir , he discovered boulders that had been moved by the ice. This was one of the first records of Ice Age glaciation in the equatorial area. From 1862 to 1866 Blanford was involved in a comprehensive geological survey of the region around Bombay.

In addition to geology , one of his fields of activity was zoology , especially research on land snails , and secondarily also on birds and mammals. He also dealt with plants and fossils . In 1866 Blanford took part in a military expedition to Magdala in Ethiopia . In 1870 he published his Observations on the Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia and in the same year took part in a Himalayan expedition to Sikkim . From 1871 to 1872 he was a member of the commission for drawing the boundaries between Persia and India . During these activities he repeatedly made natural history research about these countries.

In 1872 he returned to London to move to Calcutta for further research in 1874 . Until 1877 he was mainly concerned with the geology of the Sind desert .

After his retirement, Blanford returned to England in 1882, where he worked as editor of the Fauna of British India publishing project until shortly before his death . In 1879 he published the Manual of the Geology of India with Henry Benedict Medlicott .

For his services as a geologist, Blanford received the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London in 1883 , which he chaired from 1888 to 1890 and whose office he held from 1895 to 1905. In 1874 he was accepted into the Royal Society and in 1904 as a Companion in the Order of the Indian Empire . In 1901 he was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society for his work on the geographic distribution of animals .

Works

  • Mollusca: Testacellidae and Zonitidae. Taylor & Francis, London 1908.
  • The distribution of vertebrate animals in India, Ceylon, and Burma. Published for the Royal Society by Dulau and Co., London 1901.
  • The fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Mammalia. Taylor and Francis, London 1888-1891.
  • Observations on the geology and zoology of Abyssinia, made during the progress of the British expedition to that country in 1867-68. Macmillan and Co., London 1870.
  • Eastern Persia - An Account of the Journeys of the Persian Border Commission 1870-71-72.

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Blanford, William Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English geologist, zoologist and naturalist
DATE OF BIRTH October 7, 1832
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH June 23, 1905
Place of death London