Alfred Harker (petrologist)

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Alfred Harker (February 19, 1859 - July 28, 1939), FRS was an English geologist who specialised in petrology and interpretive petrography. He worked for the Geological Survey of Scotland and conducted extensive surveying and geological studies of western Scotland and the Isle of Skye. He and other British geologists pioneered the use of thin sections and the petrographic microscope in interpretive petrology.

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[edit] Education and Career

Harkers father was the Yorkshire corn merchant Portas Hewart Harker, his mother Ellen Mary Harker. He attended Hull and East Riding College, and the private Clewar House School (Windsor) before enrolling as an undergraduate at St. John's College (Cambridge) from where he graduated with an M.A. in January 18, 1882. In 1884 he held the post of Demonstrator in the Geology Department under McKenny Hughes (whom he regarded his mentor), as Lecturer at Newnham College in 1892 at St. Johns College, as University Lecturer in 1904, and as Reader in Petrology in 1918.

[edit] Honors and awards

In 1907, he was awarded the society's Murchison Medal, in 1922 he was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London, to which he had served as president from 1916-1918, and in 1935 the Gold Medal of the Royal Society (Fellow since 1902). The University of Edinburgh awarded him withan honorary doctoral degree in law in 1919. Mount Harker and the Harker Glacier in Antarctica are named after him. After his retirement, he was given the post of honorary curator of the Cambridge Petrological Museum, and their extensive rock collection bears his name.

[edit] Works

  • Petrology for Students, 1895, Cambridge University Press
  • The Tertiary Igneous Rocks of Skye, 1904, Geological Survey of Scotland Memoir
  • The Natural History of Igneous Rocks, 1909, Macmillan

[edit] References

  • Young, Davis A., (2003) Mind Over Magma: The Story of Igneous Petrology, Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-10279-1
  • Seward, A.C. and Tilley, C.E. (1940) Alfred Harker. 1859-1939 (Obituary), Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 3(8): 196-216.
  • Bragg, William (1939) Address of the President Sir William Bragg, O.M., at the Anniversary Meeting, 30 November 1939, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences 173(954):286-312 (Dec 18, 1939). Obituary pp. 294-295.
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