William Dickson Lang

William Dickson Lang
Born 28 September 1878
Died 3 March 1966 (aged 87)
Institutions University of Cambridge
British Museum
Alma mater Pembroke College, Cambridge
Notable awards Lyell Medal (1928)
Fellow of the Royal Society (1929)[1]
Spouse Georgiana Catherine Dixon

William Dickson Lang (28 September 1878 – 3 March 1966) was Keeper of the Department of Geology at the British Museum from 1928 until 1938.

Early life

He was born at Kurnal, India the second son of Edward Tickle Lang and Hebe, the daughter of John Venn Prior and moved to England at the age of one when the family returned. His father was a civil servant, who had been working on the Jumna Canal in the Punjab.

Education

He was educated at Christ's Hospital School, then went to Harrow School in 1894 and Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1898 to read zoology. He matriculated BA in 1902 and MA in 1905.[2]

Career

In 1902 he started as an assistant in the Geology Department of the British Museum in charge of Protozoa, Coelenterates, Sponges and Polyzoa (=Bryozoa). During WWI he was made curator of mosquitos and produced in 1920 "A Handbook on British mosquitos". After the war he returned to the Geology Department and in 1928 became Keeper of Geology in succession to F. A. Bather.

Lang was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 1929.[1] His candidacy citation read: "Distinguished for his knowledge of palaeontology; has applied evolutionary principles to the systematic arrangement of fossil polyzoa and corals, studying the recapitulation of ancestral characters in the post-embryonic growth-stages of compound as well as simple organisms, e.g., 'Brit Mus Catalogue Fossil Bryozoa' (1921, 1922), 'The Pelmatoporinae'.[3] Lang elucidated in detail the faunal and stratigraphical succession of the Lias along the Dorset coast, with special relation to ammonites. He was a proponent of the theory of orthogenesis, believing that several lineages of cribrimorph cheilostome bryozoans evolved progressively thicker and more elaborate skeletal structures which eventually became maladaptive, driving the lineage to extinction. By extending the study of existing British species of mosquitoes to their four larval stages, previously ill-known, he tested the relationships already inferred from imaginal characters.

Personal life

He retired in 1938 and wrote several articles about Mary Anning, the fossil collector. He had married in 1908 Georgiana Catherine Dixon; they had a son and a daughter.

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 White, Errol Ivor (1966). "William Dickson Lang 1878-1966". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 12: 366–326. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1966.0017.
  2. ↑ "William Dickson Lang-a pioneer of British mosquito study" (PDF). European Mosquito Bulletin 16. 2003. Retrieved 7 November 2010.
  3. ↑ Lang, W. D. (1920). "The Pelmatoporinae, an Essay on the Evolution of a Group of Cretaceous Polyzoa". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 209 (360–371): 191. doi:10.1098/rstb.1920.0004.

Further reading