Joseph Prestwich

Sir Joseph Prestwich FRS, ( born March 12, 1812 in Pensbury, Clapham, † June 23, 1896 in Shoreham, Kent ) was a British geologist and entrepreneur, known as an expert on the Tertiary and Quaternary, including verification of the stone tool finds of Boucher de Perthes in St. Acheul (a suburb of Amiens ), which proved the great antiquity of the development of Hominini.

Life

Prestwich was educated in Paris and Reading, before studying at University College London in chemistry and natural philosophy. He was an avid visitor of the geological and mineralogical collection of the Museum of the University. In 1830 he started in the wine trade of the family to cooperate - a work which he, amazingly, in addition to his work as a geologist actively held until 1872. This work brought with it that he had to travel extensively across the UK and across the Channel in France and Belgium. On his travels he made ​​numerous geological observations and sought the acquaintance of the geologists working there. In 1833 he became a member of the Geological Society of London.

Output of the 1860s served Prestwich at the Royal Coal Commission and the Royal Commission on the Metropolitan Water Supply. In 1870 he married Grace Anne McCall, the niece of his friend Hugh Falconer. After his retirement from the wine trade in 1874, he was appointed to the Chair of Geology at the University of Oxford, a position he held until his retirement in 1888. After retirement, he retired to Darent Hulme back, his house in Shoreham, where he continued his geological studies continue operation until his death in 1896.

Work

Prestwichs first work reflected his frequent trips to resist: they were concerned with the geology around Gamrie in Banffshire, Scotland, and mammalian remains in the area of Epernay in northern France. The two works were not published until 1837. A name as a geologist Prestwich made ​​with the 1836 published work on the Geology of Coalbrookdale ( Geology of Coalbrookdale, with illustrations by John Morris), the first monograph about an English coal mining district. It was based on research he had done in 1831 and 1832. From 1846 he turned to the Tertiary deposits of the London Basin, which he classified and correlated with coeval deposits in England, France and Belgium. In 1858, he met at the urging of Hugh Falconer in Abbeville with the archaeologist John Evans and traveled to St. Acheul, where Boucher de Perthes had reported the discovery of flint tools in the gravel deposits of the Somme Valley and so postulates a high antiquity of man. This thesis had been accepted by the archaeologists of his time not without a doubt. Along with Evans examined Prestwich the gravel pits of St. Acheul and was able to confirm the observations of de Perthes. Prestwichs report on this matter was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society for 1859/1860. Even if the scientific controversy about the significance of these findings persisted for a long time, but the confirmation of the findings by Prestwich and Evans was an important milestone for the study of human history.

From 1859 Prestwich wrote several essays about young, nachpliozäne Quaternary deposits, such as on the loess of southern England and northern France and the dissemination of glacial deposits. After his move from wine trade to the Chair of Geology its number of publications increased significantly. In addition to many essays - including on the geological conditions for the construction of the Channel Tunnel - 1886 and 1887 he published a two-volume geological textbook entitled Geology, Chemical and Physical, Stratigraphical and Palaeontological. In view of his, still in 1893 expressed, belief that large parts of the Atlantic Western Europe and the Mediterranean coastal areas were flooded at the end of the last ice age by huge mega tsunamis, these land routes learned partly tectonic uplift and subsidence, Prestwich was probably the last major representative katastrophistischer ideas in the geology of the 19th century.

Honors

Prestwich was in 1853 elected a member of the Royal Society and received its Royal Medal in 1865 "for his numerous and valuable contributions to the science of geology and in particular for his publications in the Philosophical Transactions for the general question of the Lowering of rivers, and over the surface deposits. " After many years as treasurer was in France and England in which there are human works with the remains of extinct animals together Prestwich 1870-1872 President of the Geological Society. In 1896 he was knighted.

Prestwich was also well known outside of England: he was one of the earliest members of the Société géologique de France and was determined at the meeting in Boulogne in 1880 as chairman of the meeting. In 1885 he was elected a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences, and was a member of numerous other European and American geological organizations. In 1888 he was unanimously elected as Chairman of the International Geological Congress in London