Leonard Johnston Wills
Encyclopedia
Professor Leonard Johnston Wills (1884–1979) – known as ‘Jack’ to friends and family – was one of the leading British geologists of his generation. He held the Chair of Geology at the University of Birmingham
from 1932 to 1949, and received many honours including the Geological Society of London
’s highest award, the Wollaston Medal
, in 1954.
suburb of Erdington
. His paternal great-grandfather, William Wills, had been a prosperous Birmingham attorney from a nonconformist, Unitarian, family. His grandfather had bought an edge-tool business in Nechells, AW Wills & Son, which manufactured such things as scythes and sickles and which his father continued to run. The family was comfortably off.
One of his great uncles was Sir Alfred Wills
, a well-known Victorian mountaineer and judge. Sir Alfred was a founder member and early President of the Alpine Club
, and was interested in the origin and shaping of the Alps – an interest which may well have influenced his great-nephew. Sir Alfred translated from French into English one of the classic early works on the geomorphology and glaciology of the mountains, Canon Rendu’s Théorie des Glaciers de la Savoie (1840). As a judge, Sir Alfred presided over the second 1895 Oscar Wilde
trial and sentenced Wilde to two years in Reading gaol.
Jack Wills’s father, William Leonard Wills (1858–1911), was a science graduate of Owens College, Manchester. His mother, Gertrude Annie Wills née Johnston (1855–1939), was the only daughter (with six brothers) of a well-known Birmingham doctor, Dr James Johnston.
The family had a strong interest in scientific matters. Jack Wills’s great grandfather, William Wills, had been involved with the British Association for the Advancement of Science
and wrote various papers on meteorology and other scientific observations. Jack Wills’s father was particularly interested in botany, zoology, geology and natural sciences generally, as well as in the developing science of photography.
in Rutland. His house was Fircroft, where the housemaster was the Revd Raven. The academic emphasis was firmly on the classics, with natural sciences receiving little attention. In spite of this, his interest in geology, encouraged by his father, was already developing.
In 1909, he was one of only two postgraduates to become Fellows of King’s College Cambridge, the other being the old Etonian economist John Maynard Keynes
. In the same year Jack Wills was awarded the Walsingham Medal. His Fellowship lasted until 1915.
Thus his Cambridge career lasted from his going up to King’s in 1903 until the end of his Fellowship in 1915. During this period there were several family connections with Cambridge. The younger of his two sisters, Lucy Wills
, went up to Newnham College in 1907, and his younger brother Alfred Gordon went up (also to King’s) in 1910. Jack Wills’s third sibling, the elder of the two sisters, Edith, married Maurice Heycock, son of another Fellow of King’s, the chemist CT Heycock FRS. Jack Wills himself married Maud Janet Ewing in 1910, the daughter of the engineer scientist Sir James Alfred Ewing. Ewing was yet another King’s Fellow, and subsequently during the Great War was the originator of Room 40, Britain’s first cryptanalytic operation, the precursor of Bletchley Park in the Second World War and the Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, now.
Jack Wills suffered various family bereavements, losing before the age of thirty both his father in 1911 and his sister Edith in 1913. Later he lost his wife Janet in 1952, and his son Leonard in 1976. He had several serious medical issues, suffering a severe coronary thrombosis
shortly after his retirement, losing the sight of one eye, and losing all his body hair to alopecia
.
Farley Cottage, its gardens, orchard and surrounding valley, was the setting for the Willses’ generous hospitality to many – family, friends, and geological colleagues – over the next forty years. ‘The Professor’ did much for local history, archaeology, and geology, and was largely instrumental in saving the valley from being flooded as a reservoir for Birmingham. He was a churchwarden at Romsley from 1930 to 1936. He was a keen gardener with extensive horticultural knowledge.
In 1956, Jack Wills decided to gift Farley Cottage and its land to the Field Studies Council
(‘FSC’), subject to him being able to continue to live there for his lifetime. The intention was that on his death the house would be used by the FSC as a Field Studies Centre. In 1965, the FSC decided that Farley Cottage was not of a size to be economic as a Centre, but that it would be sold and the proceeds put towards buying and restoring a new Centre. This was done, and Nettlecombe Court
in Somerset has since been known as the Leonard Wills Field Centre. Jack Wills and his daughter Penty moved to a small bungalow half a mile away from Farley Cottage in the same valley, where he lived until his death in 1979.
, and he retained a lifelong interest in the continental deposits and fossils of the Upper Paleozoic
and Triassic
.
He wrote accounts of new ostracoderm
fishes from the late Silurian
and Devonian
, and became a particular specialist on terrestrial arthropods, notably with delicate dissections and interpretations of fossilized Triassic scorpions and Carboniferous
eurypterid
s. He developed ingenious methods of dissection, revealing details even of their respiratory and reproductive organs.
His research work then took him into Lower Paleozoic
stratigraphy, the Trias to Quaternary succession of the Severn valley
and the origin of the Ironbridge Gorge
. His interests developed into more recent geological history, the Pleistocene
deposits of the Midlands
, and the evidence for extensive, ice-dammed lakes of which one, named by him Lake Lapworth
(after Charles Lapworth
the Professor at Birmingham until 1913), covered most of the north-west Midlands.
However, the work which was to earn him lasting fame was the putting together of all then available information on surface and subsurface structures with the aim of producing a sequential picture of the geological evolution of the British Isles
. This work continued until his last paper at the age of 93.
Amongst the numerous papers and books, the highlights included a paper in 1910 in the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association (Volume XXI, Part 5 pages 249–331) entitled On the Fossiliferous Lower Keuper Rocks of Worcestershire with Descriptions of some of the Plants and Animals Discovered Therein. In 1935 the same publication (Volume XLVI, Part 2 pages 211–246) published An Outline of the Palaeogeography of the Birmingham Country.
In 1947, the British Palaeontographical Society published his Monograph in two parts entitled British Triassic Scorpions, and in 1973 the Geological Society published his Memoir entitled A Palaeogeological Map of the Palaeozoic Floor below the Permian and Mesozoic Formations in England and Wales.
His first book appeared in 1911 – a guide to Worcestershire in the Cambridge County Geographies series, published by Cambridge University Press
. This covers all aspects of the county with, not surprisingly, a considerable emphasis on its geology and natural history.
However, his major works were his four imaginative and influential textbooks written between 1929 and 1956. The first two were:
• Physiographical Evolution of Britain (Edward Arnold, 1929) and
• The Palaeogeography of the Midlands (Liverpool University Press/Hodder & Stoughton, 1948).
These presented his research into the deep structure and evolution of the British Isles and his pioneering interpretations of subsurface data.
The second two, both published after his retirement from the Chair of Geology at Birmingham, were:
• A Palaeogeographical Atlas of the British Isles (Blackie, 1951) and
• Concealed Coalfields (Blackie, 1956).
The research work embodied in these second two titles had considerable economic significance. As BP’s senior geologist Sir Peter Kent noted, the Atlas made Jack Wills a household name among petroleum geologists, and Concealed Coalfields became the bible of National Coal Board
geologists.
His final publication, at the age of 93, was another Memoir published in 1978 by the Geological Society of London, entitled A Palaeogeological Map of the Lower Palaeozoic Floor below the cover of Upper Devonian, Carboniferous and Later Formations.
Birmingham University awarded him his PhD in 1920. In 1949, the year of his retirement from the Chair of Geology, he became Professor Emeritus.
The Geological Society of London awarded him the Lyell Medal
in 1936 and then the Wollaston Medal
, its highest award to geologists throughout the world, in 1954. Finally and uniquely, in 1976 when he was 92, the Geological Society of London made him an Honorary Fellow, the only British geologist to be so honoured.
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...
from 1932 to 1949, and received many honours including the Geological Society of London
Geological Society of London
The Geological Society of London is a learned society based in the United Kingdom with the aim of "investigating the mineral structure of the Earth"...
’s highest award, the Wollaston Medal
Wollaston Medal
The Wollaston Medal is a scientific award for geology, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London.The medal is named after William Hyde Wollaston, and was first awarded in 1831...
, in 1954.
Family background
Jack Wills was born on 27 February 1884 in the BirminghamBirmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
suburb of Erdington
Erdington
Erdington is a suburb northeast of Birmingham city centre, England and bordering Sutton Coldfield. It is also a council constituency, managed by its own district committee...
. His paternal great-grandfather, William Wills, had been a prosperous Birmingham attorney from a nonconformist, Unitarian, family. His grandfather had bought an edge-tool business in Nechells, AW Wills & Son, which manufactured such things as scythes and sickles and which his father continued to run. The family was comfortably off.
One of his great uncles was Sir Alfred Wills
Alfred Wills
Sir Alfred Wills PC was a British High Court judge and a well-known mountaineer. He was the third President of the Alpine Club from 1863 to 1865.-Early life:...
, a well-known Victorian mountaineer and judge. Sir Alfred was a founder member and early President of the Alpine Club
Alpine Club
The first Alpine Club, founded in London in 1857, was once described as:Today, Alpine clubs stage climbing competitions, operate alpine huts and paths, and are active in protecting the Alpine environment...
, and was interested in the origin and shaping of the Alps – an interest which may well have influenced his great-nephew. Sir Alfred translated from French into English one of the classic early works on the geomorphology and glaciology of the mountains, Canon Rendu’s Théorie des Glaciers de la Savoie (1840). As a judge, Sir Alfred presided over the second 1895 Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
trial and sentenced Wilde to two years in Reading gaol.
Jack Wills’s father, William Leonard Wills (1858–1911), was a science graduate of Owens College, Manchester. His mother, Gertrude Annie Wills née Johnston (1855–1939), was the only daughter (with six brothers) of a well-known Birmingham doctor, Dr James Johnston.
The family had a strong interest in scientific matters. Jack Wills’s great grandfather, William Wills, had been involved with the British Association for the Advancement of Science
British Association for the Advancement of Science
frame|right|"The BA" logoThe British Association for the Advancement of Science or the British Science Association, formerly known as the BA, is a learned society with the object of promoting science, directing general attention to scientific matters, and facilitating interaction between...
and wrote various papers on meteorology and other scientific observations. Jack Wills’s father was particularly interested in botany, zoology, geology and natural sciences generally, as well as in the developing science of photography.
Early years and school
Jack Wills was brought up in the country near Birmingham, initially in Wylde Green, then Sutton Coldfield, and finally Barnt Green, all then villages. He went to the Lickey Hills preparatory school before going in 1898 to Uppingham SchoolUppingham School
Uppingham School is a co-educational independent school of the English public school tradition, situated in the small town of Uppingham in Rutland, England...
in Rutland. His house was Fircroft, where the housemaster was the Revd Raven. The academic emphasis was firmly on the classics, with natural sciences receiving little attention. In spite of this, his interest in geology, encouraged by his father, was already developing.
Cambridge
Jack Wills went up to King’s College, Cambridge in October 1903 as a Scholar. He elected to read Natural Sciences in Part I with Geology in Part II. In 1906, he graduated BA with a First in the Natural Sciences Tripos Part I, and in 1907 made it a Double First with a First also in the Part II. In the same year he was awarded the Harkness Research Scholarship and began his postgraduate work.In 1909, he was one of only two postgraduates to become Fellows of King’s College Cambridge, the other being the old Etonian economist John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
. In the same year Jack Wills was awarded the Walsingham Medal. His Fellowship lasted until 1915.
Thus his Cambridge career lasted from his going up to King’s in 1903 until the end of his Fellowship in 1915. During this period there were several family connections with Cambridge. The younger of his two sisters, Lucy Wills
Lucy Wills
Lucy Wills, MA , LRCP, MB BS was a leading English haematologist. She conducted seminal work in India in the late 1920s and early 1930s on macrocytic anaemia of pregnancy. Her observations led to her discovery of a nutritional factor in yeast which both prevents and cures this disorder...
, went up to Newnham College in 1907, and his younger brother Alfred Gordon went up (also to King’s) in 1910. Jack Wills’s third sibling, the elder of the two sisters, Edith, married Maurice Heycock, son of another Fellow of King’s, the chemist CT Heycock FRS. Jack Wills himself married Maud Janet Ewing in 1910, the daughter of the engineer scientist Sir James Alfred Ewing. Ewing was yet another King’s Fellow, and subsequently during the Great War was the originator of Room 40, Britain’s first cryptanalytic operation, the precursor of Bletchley Park in the Second World War and the Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, now.
Norse sword
In 1907, while out cycling from Cambridge, Jack Wills sheltered from a thunderstorm in a quarry at Hauxton Mill, just south of Trumpington, and noticed something unusual protruding from the rock face. It turned out to be a perfectly preserved tenth- or eleventh-century double-edged Norse sword, probably a relic of a Viking invasion. It is now in the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge.1907 – 1913
After graduating in 1907, Jack Wills did two years research under the auspices of the Harkness Scholarship, focusing on the plant and animal fossils of the Bromsgrove district in the Midlands. In 1909, the year he became a Fellow of King’s, he started a four-year appointment with the Geological Survey of Great Britain, mapping the rocks of the Llangollen area of north Wales.Birmingham University
In 1913, he started his long association with the geology department of Birmingham University, joining as Lecturer in Geology and Geomorphology, under Professor William Boulton. In 1932, when Boulton retired, Jack Wills succeeded him as Professor and Head of Department, remaining in this post for seventeen years until his retirement in turn in 1949. He then became Professor Emeritus, retaining his link with the department until his death in 1979, a few weeks short of his ninety-sixth birthday.Marriage and family
Jack Wills’s marriage to Maud Janet Ewing in 1910 proved a particularly happy one. They had two children: Leonard born in 1911, and Penissa (‘Penty’) born in 1913. Penty never married, but Leonard did and had one son, David, who in turn had three children, Jack Wills’s great-grandchildren.Jack Wills suffered various family bereavements, losing before the age of thirty both his father in 1911 and his sister Edith in 1913. Later he lost his wife Janet in 1952, and his son Leonard in 1976. He had several serious medical issues, suffering a severe coronary thrombosis
Coronary thrombosis
Coronary thrombosis is a form of thrombosis affecting the coronary circulation. It is associated with stenosis subsequent to clotting. The condition is considered as a type of ischaemic heart disease.It can lead to a myocardial infarction...
shortly after his retirement, losing the sight of one eye, and losing all his body hair to alopecia
Alopecia
Alopecia means loss of hair from the head or body. Alopecia can mean baldness, a term generally reserved for pattern alopecia or androgenic alopecia. Compulsive pulling of hair can also produce hair loss. Hairstyling routines such as tight ponytails or braids may induce Traction alopecia. Both...
.
Farley Cottage
In 1926, the Willses bought Farley Cottage, with some 45 surrounding acres in a valley near the Lickey Hills between Bromsgrove and Romsley, together with the neighbouring mediaeval Shut Mill. In 1926, this small and idyllic estate was extremely remote, with no mains electricity or water. Jack Wills installed a turbine which generated electricity from the mill pool. A ram supplied water from a spring. There was a telephone: Romsley 3. In 1936, Farley Cottage was enlarged and modernised by their architect son, Leonard, then newly graduated from the Architectural Association.Farley Cottage, its gardens, orchard and surrounding valley, was the setting for the Willses’ generous hospitality to many – family, friends, and geological colleagues – over the next forty years. ‘The Professor’ did much for local history, archaeology, and geology, and was largely instrumental in saving the valley from being flooded as a reservoir for Birmingham. He was a churchwarden at Romsley from 1930 to 1936. He was a keen gardener with extensive horticultural knowledge.
In 1956, Jack Wills decided to gift Farley Cottage and its land to the Field Studies Council
Field Studies Council
The Field Studies Council is an educational charity based in the UK. It opened its first Field Centre in 1947 at Flatford Mill, and now operates 17 Field Centres in various locations in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland offering both residential and non-residential field courses...
(‘FSC’), subject to him being able to continue to live there for his lifetime. The intention was that on his death the house would be used by the FSC as a Field Studies Centre. In 1965, the FSC decided that Farley Cottage was not of a size to be economic as a Centre, but that it would be sold and the proceeds put towards buying and restoring a new Centre. This was done, and Nettlecombe Court
Nettlecombe Court
Nettlecombe Court is a large country mansion in the English county of Somerset. Nettlecombe Court was originally built as a manor house, becoming a girls' boarding school in the early 1960s and since 1967 has been the Leonard Wills Field Centre run by the Field Studies Council...
in Somerset has since been known as the Leonard Wills Field Centre. Jack Wills and his daughter Penty moved to a small bungalow half a mile away from Farley Cottage in the same valley, where he lived until his death in 1979.
Geology
Jack Wills’s researches started with the plant and animal fossils of the Keuper sediments exposed in quarries around BromsgroveBromsgrove
Bromsgrove is a town in Worcestershire, England. The town is about north east of Worcester and south west of Birmingham city centre. It had a population of 29,237 in 2001 with a small ethnic minority and is in Bromsgrove District.- History :Bromsgrove is first documented in the early 9th century...
, and he retained a lifelong interest in the continental deposits and fossils of the Upper Paleozoic
Paleozoic
The Paleozoic era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic eon, spanning from roughly...
and Triassic
Triassic
The Triassic is a geologic period and system that extends from about 250 to 200 Mya . As the first period of the Mesozoic Era, the Triassic follows the Permian and is followed by the Jurassic. Both the start and end of the Triassic are marked by major extinction events...
.
He wrote accounts of new ostracoderm
Ostracoderm
Ostracoderms are any of several groups of extinct, primitive, jawless fishes that were covered in an armor of bony plates. They belong to the taxon Ostracodermi, and their fossils are found in the Ordovician and Devonian Period strata of North America and Europe...
fishes from the late Silurian
Silurian
The Silurian is a geologic period and system that extends from the end of the Ordovician Period, about 443.7 ± 1.5 Mya , to the beginning of the Devonian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya . As with other geologic periods, the rock beds that define the period's start and end are well identified, but the...
and Devonian
Devonian
The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic Era spanning from the end of the Silurian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya , to the beginning of the Carboniferous Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya...
, and became a particular specialist on terrestrial arthropods, notably with delicate dissections and interpretations of fossilized Triassic scorpions and Carboniferous
Carboniferous
The Carboniferous is a geologic period and system that extends from the end of the Devonian Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya , to the beginning of the Permian Period, about 299.0 ± 0.8 Mya . The name is derived from the Latin word for coal, carbo. Carboniferous means "coal-bearing"...
eurypterid
Eurypterid
Eurypterids are an extinct group of arthropods related to arachnids which include the largest known arthropods that ever lived. They are members of the extinct order Eurypterida ; which is the most diverse Paleozoic chelicerate order in terms of species...
s. He developed ingenious methods of dissection, revealing details even of their respiratory and reproductive organs.
His research work then took him into Lower Paleozoic
Paleozoic
The Paleozoic era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic eon, spanning from roughly...
stratigraphy, the Trias to Quaternary succession of the Severn valley
Severn Valley
Severn Valley could be*The Severn Valley in Shropshire, English Midlands *The Severn Valley Country Park in Shropshire, English Midlands *The fictional Severn Valley...
and the origin of the Ironbridge Gorge
Ironbridge Gorge
The Ironbridge Gorge is a deep gorge formed by the River Severn in Shropshire, England.Originally called the Severn Gorge, the gorge now takes its name from its famous Iron Bridge, the first iron bridge of its kind in the world, and a monument to the industry that began there...
. His interests developed into more recent geological history, the Pleistocene
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
deposits of the Midlands
English Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...
, and the evidence for extensive, ice-dammed lakes of which one, named by him Lake Lapworth
Lake Lapworth
Lake Lapworth existed in England in the Ice Age when ice from Wales and the north blocked the outlet of the River Dee near the site of Chester. The Dee backed up, forming Lake Lapworth, until it overflowed southwards and cut the Ironbridge gorge, permanently diverting part of the Dee drainage into...
(after Charles Lapworth
Charles Lapworth
Charles Lapworth was an English geologist.-Biography:He was born at Faringdon in Berkshire and educated as a teacher at the Culham Diocesan Training College near Abingdon, Oxfordshire. He moved to the Scottish border region, where he investigated the previously little-known fossil fauna of the area...
the Professor at Birmingham until 1913), covered most of the north-west Midlands.
However, the work which was to earn him lasting fame was the putting together of all then available information on surface and subsurface structures with the aim of producing a sequential picture of the geological evolution of the British Isles
British Isles
The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...
. This work continued until his last paper at the age of 93.
Books and publications
Jack Wills’s publications covered a span of over seventy years. His first were two papers in 1907 about fossils in the Bromsgrove area. His last was a Palaeogeological Map produced in 1978.Amongst the numerous papers and books, the highlights included a paper in 1910 in the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association (Volume XXI, Part 5 pages 249–331) entitled On the Fossiliferous Lower Keuper Rocks of Worcestershire with Descriptions of some of the Plants and Animals Discovered Therein. In 1935 the same publication (Volume XLVI, Part 2 pages 211–246) published An Outline of the Palaeogeography of the Birmingham Country.
In 1947, the British Palaeontographical Society published his Monograph in two parts entitled British Triassic Scorpions, and in 1973 the Geological Society published his Memoir entitled A Palaeogeological Map of the Palaeozoic Floor below the Permian and Mesozoic Formations in England and Wales.
His first book appeared in 1911 – a guide to Worcestershire in the Cambridge County Geographies series, published by Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
. This covers all aspects of the county with, not surprisingly, a considerable emphasis on its geology and natural history.
However, his major works were his four imaginative and influential textbooks written between 1929 and 1956. The first two were:
• Physiographical Evolution of Britain (Edward Arnold, 1929) and
• The Palaeogeography of the Midlands (Liverpool University Press/Hodder & Stoughton, 1948).
These presented his research into the deep structure and evolution of the British Isles and his pioneering interpretations of subsurface data.
The second two, both published after his retirement from the Chair of Geology at Birmingham, were:
• A Palaeogeographical Atlas of the British Isles (Blackie, 1951) and
• Concealed Coalfields (Blackie, 1956).
The research work embodied in these second two titles had considerable economic significance. As BP’s senior geologist Sir Peter Kent noted, the Atlas made Jack Wills a household name among petroleum geologists, and Concealed Coalfields became the bible of National Coal Board
National Coal Board
The National Coal Board was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the mines on "vesting day", 1 January 1947...
geologists.
His final publication, at the age of 93, was another Memoir published in 1978 by the Geological Society of London, entitled A Palaeogeological Map of the Lower Palaeozoic Floor below the cover of Upper Devonian, Carboniferous and Later Formations.
Degrees and honours
Cambridge University awarded Jack Wills his BA in 1906, his MA in 1910, and his ScD in 1928. Cambridge also awarded him the Harkness Scholarship in 1907 and the Walsingham Medal in 1909. He was a Fellow of King’s College from 1909 to 1915.Birmingham University awarded him his PhD in 1920. In 1949, the year of his retirement from the Chair of Geology, he became Professor Emeritus.
The Geological Society of London awarded him the Lyell Medal
Lyell Medal
The Lyell Medal is a prestigious annual scientific medal given by the Geological Society of London, equal in status to the Murchison Medal, awarded on the basis of research to an Earth Scientist of exceptional quality...
in 1936 and then the Wollaston Medal
Wollaston Medal
The Wollaston Medal is a scientific award for geology, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London.The medal is named after William Hyde Wollaston, and was first awarded in 1831...
, its highest award to geologists throughout the world, in 1954. Finally and uniquely, in 1976 when he was 92, the Geological Society of London made him an Honorary Fellow, the only British geologist to be so honoured.