Charles Lapworth

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Charles Lapworth (September 20, 1842 – March 13, 1920) was an English geologist.

Born at Faringdon in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), and trained as a teacher, Lapworth settled in the Scottish border region, where he investigated the previously little-known fossil fauna of the area. He married in 1869 and stayed in the area. Eventually, through patient mapping and innovative use of index fossil analysis, Lapworth showed that what was thought to be a thick sequence of Silurian rocks was in fact a much thinner series of rocks repeated by faulting and folding.

He served as a professor at several colleges, and received numerous awards for his work. He is best known for pioneering faunal analysis of Silurian beds by means of index fossils, especially graptolites, and his proposal (eventually adopted) that the beds between the Cambrian beds of north Wales and the Silurian beds of South Wales should be assigned to a new geological period: the Ordovician. This proposal resolved a heated argument over the age of the strata in question.

Charles Lapworth also devoted time to mapping near Durness in Scotland's northwest highlands and was first to propose the controversial theory that here older rocks were found lying above younger, suggesting complex folding or faulting as a cause. Later Peach and Horne were dispatched to the area and their monumental memoir proved Lapworth correct.

[edit] Awards

Lapworth received many awards for his pioneering work and contributions to geology. In 1891, he received the greatest scientific accolade when presented the Gold Medal of the Royal Society. While in 1899, he received the highest award of the Geological Society of London, the Wollaston Medal, in recognition of his outstanding work in the Southern Uplands, and Northwest Highlands of Scotland.

[edit] Lapworth Museum

Papers relating to Charles Lapworth can be found at the University of Birmingham Special Collections. The University of Birmingham also maintains the Lapworth Museum within the Aston Webb building on the main Edgbaston campus. The Lapworth Archive, housed in the museum, contains a remarkably complete record of all areas of his research work and teaching.