P-Z

Major John Wesley Powell (1834–1902)

Powell grew up in rural Illinois and had no schooling after the age of 12. He lost his right arm in the American Civil War. After the war he went exploring in the frontier territories and during two field seasons took boats from Green River Wyoming through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, making the first geological observations there. He became Director of the US Geological Survey in 1881 and held the post for 13 years. He was interested in the problems of water supply in arid lands, and was one of the first environmental geologists. He was succeeded in the post of Director by Charles Doolittle Walcott. His death marked the end of the "heroic era" of American geology, departing after Newberry, Dana, Hall and King. (For more information see Ellis Yochelson’s book Charles Doolittle Walcott, Paleontologist Kent State University Press ISBN 0 87338 599 3)

Friederich August Quenstedt (1809-1889)

German palaeontologist and stratigrapher, he was noted for his work on the ammonite zonation of the Swabian Jurassic. Published Der Jura in 1858.

August Rothpletz (1853-1918)

German stratigrapher and invertebrate palaeontologist. Mapped in Saxony and from 1884 joined the University of Munich. Early work on palynology of the Palaeozoic, but chiefly remembered for studies of algae, brachiopods and hydrozoa

Frank Rutley (1842-1904)

Rutley’s name is still known to geologists through the famous Elements of Mineralogy, first published in 1874. It is probably the most reprinted geological textbook of all time. Rutley’s interests covered mineralogy, petrology and Quaternary geology. He worked with the Geological Survey from 1867.

Sir Albert Charles Seward (1863-1941)

Seward was a palaeobotanist from the University of Cambridge. He worked on Mesozoic plants, especially the English Jurassic, and in both Kashmir and Afghanistan. He wrote a famous and (in its day) popular book entitled Plant life through the ages (1931)

William Hobbs Shrubsole (1837-1927)

Shrubsole's principal employment was as a grocer, but he was also an amateur geologist whose brothers (OA and GW) were also geologists (though GW was a retail pharmacist as well)He studied the London Clay, principally its stratigraphy and micropalaeontology.

William Johnson Sollas (1849-1936)

Sollas was professor of geology at Bristol University, Dublin, and finally Oxford (from 1897). A stratigrapher, palaeontologist as well as a petrologist, mineralogist and geomorphologist, Sollas made important studies of the geology of the Bristol district, the Silurian of the Cardiff district, eskers of Ireland, deposition in the Severn estuary, as well as the structure of Pacific coral reefs and crystal structure. Sollas was responsible for the English translation of the great Austrian geologist Edward Suess’s great volume The face of the Earth and persuaded the Society to finance a plaque in Suess’s honour on his birthplace in Islington, London. Suess will be the subject of a subsequent From the Archive.

Richard Harrison Solly (1851-1925)

English mineralogist and crystallographer, Solly worked at the British Museum (Natural History) and the University of Cambridge. He is chiefly remembered for his studies of Cornwall and Binnenthal, Switzerland.

Eduard Suess (1831-1914)

Austrian structural geologist, geomorphologist and stratigrapher, Suess was actually born at 5, Duncan Terrace, Islington, London. The house still bears a plaque commemorating him, thanks to the efforts of W.J. Sollas, the English translator of his revolutionary tome Antlitz der Erde (The face of the Earth). Schooled in the rigours of Alpine geology, Suess coined the name Tethys and worked at the Imperial Museum, Vienna (1851-1862) and at the University of Vienna (1883-1885). He was the father of Franz Suess, who eventually succeeded his father at the University of Vienna and made wide-ranging studies of Bohemian and Moravian regional geology.

Sir Jethro Justinian Harris Teall (1849-1924)

English igneous and metamorphic petrologist. Published British Petrography (1888) based on his work with the polarising microscope. Director of the British geological Survey from 1901, his own research was principally concerned with mapping in NW Scotland.

Charles Doolittle Walcott (1850-1927)

Walcott, remembered chiefly as the discoverer of the Burgess Shale, is one of the most respected figures in the history of geology. He had little formal education, but graduated from fossil-hunter to become assistant to James Hall, New York State Palaeontologist. He first achieved fame through describing trilobite limbs. Joining the recently founded US Geological Survey in 1879 he became its Director in 1894. His prolific palaeontological and biostratigraphic work concentrated on the Lower Palaeozoic of North America. To some extent this massive oeuvre today eclipses the enormous political influence he wielded. Onw of the most forceful institutional heads in American science, he was for a period Director of USGS, Secretary of the Carnegie Institution and chair of two Committees appointed by President Roosevelt.

This photograph (undated) is by Maull & Sons of Piccadilly, so may have been taken during the London session of the International Congress of Geologists, September 1888. (For more information see Ellis Yochelson’s book Charles Doolittle Walcott, Paleontologist Kent State University Press ISBN 0 87338 599 3)

Johannes Walther (1860-1937)

German geologist, palaeontologist and geological polymath who wrote mainly on palaeontology and geomorphology, with major contributions to lithogenesis and marine geology.

William Whitehead Watts (1860-1947)

A stratigrapher, Watts was also an igneous petrologist and a historian of geology. He wrote on the petrology and structure of Ireland, the Isle of Man and England and is particularly remembered for work carried out in the Welsh Borders and Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire. After spells in the Geological Survey of Ireland and the University of Birmingham, Watts became Professor of Geology at Imperial College, London and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

Sir Arthur Smith Woodward (1864-1944)

Vertebrate palaeontologist, he worked at the British Museum (Natural History) between 1882 and 1924. He is mostly remembered for his studies of fossil Jurassic and Cretaceous fish. He was embroiled in the scientific description of the forged Piltdown Skull. After the forgery was unmasked in 1953, years of conspiracy theory have blackened the names of everyone connected with the subject. However there can now be little real doubt that the real perpetrator was actually its "discoverer": arch forger, plagiarist and fraud Charles Dawson.

Horace Bolingbroke Woodward (1848-1914)

Woodward was the third and last in along line of geologists (father Samuel P. and grandfather Samuel), which perhaps gave him the sense of history that led him to write the History of the Geological Society of London (1907) published for the Society’s centenary. His first job, in fact, was assistant to the Library and Museum of the Geological Society (from the age of 15!). He became an invertebrate palaeontologist, stratigrapher, hydrogeologist and worked for the Survey (from 1867) in Devon, Dorset and Norfolk. He wrote a book on The Geology of England and Wales (1887), but was especially associated with the rocks and fossils of the Jurassic. He won the Society’s highest honour, the Wollaston Medal, in 1909.