William Joscelyn Arkell

William Joscelyn Arkell ( born June 9, 1904 in Highworth, Wiltshire, † April 18, 1958 in Cambridge ) was a British geologist who was in his time in the UK as a leading authority on the stratigraphy and paleontology of the Jura.

Life

Arkell studied at Oxford University with a degree in geology in 1925., Where his employment began with fossils of the Jurassic, which was also the subject of his dissertation in 1928. During his time as a graduate student at Oxford he also participated in several archaeological excavations from the Paleolithic period in the Nile Valley in Egypt by the University of Chicago. In 1927 he became a lecturer at New College, Oxford in 1929 and Senior Research Fellow at New College. Later he was at Trinity College.

He also dealt with the use of limestone of the Jura as a building material in Oxford and published in 1947 a book about it. Another focus was the tectonics of Dorset ( Weymouth, Portland, Isle of Purbeck ). After the Second World War, he was a sought-after expert in the oil industry for Jurassic index fossils ( ammonites) and traveled widely in the Middle East.

In 1944 he was awarded the Mary Clark Thompson Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, 1949, the Lyell Medal and 1953 the Leopold von Buch- badge. In 1947 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1934 he received an honorary doctorate (D. Sc.) In Oxford.

Writings

• The Jurassic system of Great Britain. Oxford University Press, 1933.
• Jurassic Geology of the World. Oliver and Boyd, 1956.
• With S. I. Tomkeiff: English rock term. Oxford University Press, 1952.
• Oxford Stone. Faber and Faber, 1947.