Joseph Beete Jukes

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Joseph Beete Jukes (October 10, 1811 – July 29, 1869), English geologist, was born at Summer Hill, near Birmingham.

He took his degree at Cambridge in 1836. He began the study of geology under Sedgwick, and in 1839 was appointed geological surveyor of Newfoundland. He returned to England at the end of 1840, and in 1842 sailed as naturalist on board HMS Fly, despatched to survey Torres Strait, New Guinea, and the east coast of Australia.

Jukes landed in England again in June 1846, and in August received an appointment on the geological survey of Great Britain. The district to which he was first sent was North Wales. In 1847 he commenced the survey of the South Staffordshire coal-field and continued this work during successive years after the close of field-work in Wales. The results were published in his Geology of the South Staffordshire Coal-field (1853; 2nd ed. 1859), a work remarkable for its accuracy and philosophic treatment.

In 1850 he accepted the post of local director of the geological survey of Ireland. The exhausting nature of this work slowly but surely wore out even his robust constitution and on the 29th of July 1869 be died.

For many years he lectured as professor of geology, first at the Royal Dublin Society's Museum of Irish Industry, and afterwards at the Royal College of Science in Dublin. He was an admirable teacher, and his Student's Manual was the favoured textbook of British students for many years. During his residence in Ireland he wrote an article On the Mode of Formation of some of the River-valleys in the South of Ireland (Quarterly Journ. Geol. Soc. 1862), and in this now classic essay he first clearly sketched the origin and development of rivers. In later years he devoted much attention to the relations between the Devonian system and the Carboniferous rocks and Old Red Sandstone.

Jukes wrote many papers that were printed in the London and Dublin geological journals and other periodicals. He edited, and in great measure wrote, forty-two memoirs explanatory of the maps of the south, east and west of Ireland, and prepared a geological map of Ireland on a scale of 8 miles to an inch. He was also the author of:

Excursions in and about Newfoundland (2 vols, 1842)
Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of H. M. S. Fly (2 vols, 1847)
A Sketch of the Physical Structure of Australia (1850)
Popular Physical Geology (1853)
Student's Manual of Geology (1857; 2nd ed. 1862) a latei edition was revised by A Geikie, 1872)
the article "Geology" in the Ency. Brit. 8th ed. (1858)
School Manual of Geology (1863)

See Letters, etc., of J. Beete Jukes, edited, with Connecting Memoria Notes, by his Sister (CA Browne) (1871), to which is added chronological list of Jukes's writings.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.