William George Fearnsides

William George Fearnsides ( born November 10, 1879 in White Hall, Horbury, Yorkshire, † May 15 1968 in Sheffield ) was a British geologist who dealt primarily with economic geology.

Fearnsides, who was known to most colleagues under the name Bones, went to the Wheelwright Grammar School in Dewsbury and studied with a scholarship to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he completed the Tripos examinations in science in 1900 and 1901 with top marks. 1904-1915 he was a Fellow of his college in Cambridge and from 1908 Lecturer in Natural Sciences and from 1909 Demonstrator in Petrology. He was from 1913 until his retirement in 1945, the first Professor of Geology at the University of Sheffield was founded in 1905.

At Cambridge he studied metallic alloys and the geology of the lower Paleozoic ( Silurian, Ordovician ), especially in Wales. He dealt in Sheffield much with economic applications of geology, especially with the coal geology and in this context the Carboniferous of Great Britain, particularly in the Midlands. During World War II he worked intensively on the development of new sources of raw materials in the UK and began also with issues such as the behavior of refractory materials for blast furnaces to deal, for which he established a separate department at the University of Sheffield. He also dealt with hydrogeology ( water supply), petroleum geology (which he conducted research in India and Burma), ore deposits (for example, 1956 in Northern Rhodesia manganese ore ).

He was after the nationalization of the British coal mines from 1947 to 1958 consulting geologist of the National Coal Board for the West Midlands region and monitored during this period extensive new prospecting.

He was a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1932. It was 1936/37, the Council of the Royal Society, from 1935 to 1945 the Council of the British Association for the Advancement of Science ( and 1933 President of Section C ), was from 1938 to 1940 and from 1945 to 1947 Vice President and 1943-1954 President of the Geological Society of London.

In 1932 he received the Murchison Medal, 1917 Greenwell Medal of North England Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and the Bessemer price of the Society of Engineers. In 1913 he was awarded a gold medal of the Surveyors Institution. In 1946 he became an Honorary Fellow of Sidney Sussex College and he was an honorary member of the Institute of Mining Engineers. 1934/5 he was president of the Yorkshire Geological Society.

His son was the paleontologist Oliver Bulman.