English geologist
Charles Lapworth
FRS
FGS
(20 September 1842 ? 13 March 1920) was a headteacher and an English geologist
[1]
who pioneered faunal analysis using
index fossils
and identified the
Ordovician
period.
Biography
[
edit
]
Charles Lapworth was born at
Faringdon
in Berkshire (now
Oxfordshire
) the son of James Lapworth.
[2]
He trained 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. He was headmaster of the school in
Galashiels
from 1864 to 1875.
[3]
In 1869 he married Janet, daughter of
Galashiels
schoolmaster Walter Sanderson.
Through mapping and innovative use of index fossil analysis, based on a sequence exposed at
Dob's Linn
, Lapworth showed that what was thought to be a thick sequence of
Silurian
rocks was in fact a much thinner series of rocks repeated by faulting and folding.
[4]
He completed this pioneering research in the Southern Uplands while employed as a schoolmaster for 11 years at the Episcopal Church school, Galashiels. He then studied geology and became in 1875 an assistant at
Madras College
in St Andrews, Fife, and then in 1881 the first professor of geology at
Mason Science College
, later the
University of Birmingham
, where he taught until his retirement in 1913.
He is best known for pioneering faunal analysis of Silurian beds by means of
index fossils
, especially
graptolites
, and his proposal (eventually adopted) that the beds between the
Cambrian
beds of north
Wales
and the
Silurian
beds of South Wales should be assigned to a new geological period: the
Ordovician
.
[5]
This proposal resolved the long running "
Highlands Controversy
" which began when
Roderick Murchison
and
Adam Sedgwick
argued over the relative ages of the strata in question. Lapworth received numerous awards for his research work, while for teaching he used the English Midlands as a setting for demonstrating the fieldwork techniques he had pioneered in his own research.
Following his researches in the Southern Uplands Charles Lapworth also devoted time to mapping near
Durness
in Scotland's northwest highlands and was first to propose the controversial theory that here older rocks were found lying above younger, suggesting complex folding or faulting as a cause.
[7]
Later
Peach
and
Horne
were dispatched to the area and their monumental memoir proved Lapworth correct.
[8]
[9]
[10]
In the English Midlands he carried out important work in Shropshire, in particular identifying fossils of
Olenelloid trilobites
of Cambrian age, demonstrating that Cambrian rocks underlay the Carboniferous rocks between Nuneaton and Atherstone, and suggesting a pre-Cambrian date for the
Longmyndian
rocks that underlay them.
[11]
He extrapolated these findings to the N.W. Highlands of Scotland, suggesting that the Torridonian sandstone might correspond to the Longmyndian rocks, and thus be pre-Cambrian rather than Cambrian, and that the Durness-Eriboll series, overlaying the Torridonian, would be of Cambrian age rather than Silurian.
[6]
Again Peach and Horne, surveying in
Dundonnell Forest
, confirmed Lapworths's suggestion, finding Olenelloid fossils in the fucoid beds of the Durness-Eriboll series.
[12]
For a modern account and discussion of the elucidation of the geology of the N.W. Highlands, see Oldroyd (1990).
[13]
He died on 13 March 1920 and is buried in
Lodge Hill Cemetery
near Birmingham.
Family
[
edit
]
He married Janet Sanderson in 1869.
[14]
The couple had five children in total. The first and last born children died during infancy; Ernest, born 22 January 1871 and died 6 February 1871,
[15]
and Walter Sanderson Lapworth, born in 1882 and died in 1884 before his second birthday.
[16]
The children who survived to adulthood were Arthur (born c. 1873), Herbert (born c. 1876), and Edith Matilda (born c. 1879).
[17]
Arthur Lapworth
became a renowned chemist and Herbert a civil engineer, engineering geologist, stratigrapher and palaeontologist.
Honours and awards
[
edit
]
Lapworth received many awards for his work and contributions to geology. In June 1888 he was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society
and in 1891 was awarded their
Royal Medal
.
[18]
In 1899, he received the highest award of the
Geological Society of London
, the
Wollaston Medal
, in recognition of his outstanding work in the Southern Uplands, and Northwest Highlands of Scotland. There years later, in February 1902, he was elected President of the Geological Society for the years 1902?1904.
[19]
The glacial
Lake Lapworth
, was named for him by
Leonard Johnston Wills
in recognition of his original suggestion of its existence in 1898.
[20]
Aberdeen University
awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1884 and
Glasgow University
in 1912 (both LLD).
In 1916 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh
.
Lapworth Museum of Geology
[
edit
]
Papers relating to Charles Lapworth can be found at the
University of Birmingham
in the
Lapworth Museum of Geology
, located within the Aston Webb building on the main Edgbaston campus. The Lapworth Archive contains a remarkably complete record of all areas of his research work and teaching. In August 2021 an Archives Revealed funded project began to catalogue and promote Lapworth's archive, which is due to be completed in January 2023.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Lapworth, Charles"
.
Who's Who
. Vol. 59. 1907. p. 1020.
- ^
Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783?2002
(PDF)
. The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006.
ISBN
0-902-198-84-X
. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on 4 March 2016
. Retrieved
12 March
2017
.
- ^
"Category:Charles Lapworth - Wikimedia Commons"
.
commons.wikimedia.org
. Retrieved
20 August
2021
.
- ^
Lapworth, Charles (1878).
"The Moffat Series"
.
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society
.
34
(1?4): 241?346.
doi
:
10.1144/gsl.jgs.1878.034.01-04.23
.
S2CID
140621558
.
- ^
Charles Lapworth (1879)
"On the Tripartite Classification of the Lower Palaeozoic Rocks,"
Geological Magazine
, new series,
6
: 1?15. From pp. 13?14: "North Wales itself ? at all events the whole of the great Bala district where Sedgwick first worked out the physical succession among the rocks of the intermediate or so-called
Upper Cambrian
or
Lower Silurian
system; and in all probability much of the Shelve and the Caradoc area, whence Murchison first published its distinctive fossils ? lay within the territory of the Ordovices; … Here, then, have we the hint for the appropriate title for the central system of the Lower Palaeozoics. It should be called the Ordovician System, after this old British tribe."
- ^
a
b
Lapworth, Charles (1891).
"On Olenellus Callavei and its Geological Relationships"
.
Geological Magazine
.
8
(12): 529?536.
Bibcode
:
1891GeoM....8..529L
.
doi
:
10.1017/S0016756800187643
.
S2CID
140616353
.
- ^
Lapworth, Charles (1883) "The secret of the Highlands,"
The Geological Magazine
, decade ii,
10
:
120?128
;
193?199
;
337?344.
- ^
Peach, B.N.; Horne, John (1884).
"Report on the Geology of the North-West of Sutherland"
.
Nature
.
31
(785): 31?35.
Bibcode
:
1884Natur..31...31P
.
doi
:
10.1038/031031a0
.
S2CID
4142467
.
- ^
Peach, B.N.; Horne, J.; Gunn, W.; Clough, C.T.; Hinxman, L.; Cadell, H.M. (1888).
"Report on the Recent Work of the Geological Survey in the North-west Highlands of Scotland, based on the Field-notes and Maps"
.
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society
.
44
(1?4): 378?441.
doi
:
10.1144/GSL.JGS.1888.044.01-04.34
.
S2CID
129572998
.
- ^
Geikie, Archibald; Peach, Bejamin Neave; Horne, John; Gunn, William; Clough, Charles Thomas; Hinxman, Lionel Wordworth; Teall, Jethro Justinian Harris (1907).
The geological structure of the north-west Highlands of Scotland
. Glasgow: His Majesty's Stationery Office.
- ^
Lapworth, Charles (1888).
"On the Discovery of the Olenellus Fauna in the Lower Cambrian Rocks of Britain"
.
Nature
.
39
(1000): 212?213.
Bibcode
:
1888Natur..39..212L
.
doi
:
10.1038/039212b0
.
S2CID
37366158
.
- ^
Peach, B.N.; Horne, J. (1892).
"The Olenellus Zone in the North-west Highlands of Scotland"
.
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society
.
48
(1?4): 227?242.
doi
:
10.1144/GSL.JGS.1892.048.01-04.17
.
S2CID
140197589
.
- ^
Oldroyd, David R. (1990).
The Highlands Controversy
. University of Chicago Press.
ISBN
0-226-62635-0
– via
Internet Archive
.
- ^
Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783?2002
(PDF)
. The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006.
ISBN
0-902-198-84-X
. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on 4 March 2016
. Retrieved
12 March
2017
.
- ^
'Southern Reporter' newspaper notices on 26th Jan 1871 and 16th Feb 1871. Available on British Newspaper Archive.
- ^
Civil Registration birth and death indexes.
- ^
Birth years taken from the 1881 census - not always accurate.
- ^
"Library and Archive Catalogue"
. Royal Society
. Retrieved
7 November
2010
.
[
permanent dead link
]
- ^
"The Geological Society of London".
The Times
. No. 36699. London. 24 February 1902. p. 6.
- ^
Wills, L.J. (1924).
"The Development of the Severn Valley in the Neighbourhood of Iron-Bridge and Bridgnorth"
.
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society
.
80
(1?4): 274?308.
doi
:
10.1144/GSL.JGS.1924.080.01-04.15
.
S2CID
130464410
. Archived from
the original
on 16 November 2016
. Retrieved
27 August
2011
.
External links
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