THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE 



NEW SERIES. DECADE VI. VOL. IV. 







Ko. VII.— JULY, 1917. 



^ % 



I. — Eminent Living Geologists. 



Alfred Harker, M.A., LL.D. (McGill), F.P.S., President of the 

 Geological Society of London 1916-17, Fellow of St. John's 

 College, and Lecturer in Petrology in the University of Cambridge. 



(WITH A PORTRAIT, PLATE XVIII.) 



DP. ALPPED HAPKEP was born at Hull, in Yorkshire, on 

 February 19, 1859 ; his name may thus be appropriately 

 added, as an " eminent geologist", to the county which claims 

 amongst its sons the name of Sedgwick, the Woodwardian Professor 

 of Geology in the University of Cambridge (1818-73), the first who 

 taught modern geology ; and famous as having had such historians 

 as William Smith (the ''Father of English Geology") and his nephew, 

 Professor John Phillips; also as the birthplace of Sorby, Williamson, 

 Strickland, Hudleston, and many others. 



He had, as a boy, a taste for chemistry and natural history, and 

 made his first acquaintance with geology in his holiday wanderings 

 along the Yorkshire coast, with John Phillips' writings as his guide. 



It was as a student of mathematics that Harker went up to 

 Cambridge, and was entered at St. John's College in 1878. But lie 

 soon found, in the genial Professor McKenny Hughes, 1 one who was 

 ever ready to welcome any "freshman " with geological leanings, and 

 Harker became one of the first members of the Sedgwick Club, founded 

 about that time by Watts and others of his contemporaries. 



After graduating in the Mathematical Tripos as 8th Wrangler, in 

 January, 1882, Harker came back to geology by way of physics and 

 mineralogy, and was at once offered a teaching post on the geological 

 staff. As demonstrator and afterwards lecturer, he has been 

 responsible for the teaching of petrology at Cambridge for more than 

 thirty years; but for a long time the almost total want of accom- 

 modation and equipment in the old Woodwardian Museum made it 

 impossible to carry out this work in a satisfactory manner. 



Alfred Harker was elected a Fellow of St. John's in 1885. In 

 those days this College, owing doubtless in part to Professor Bonney's 

 influence, was notably strong in Geology. Of the last nine Presidents 

 of the Geological Society five have been Johnians. 



As a field-geologist his earliest original work was done in North 



1 Written on May 10. Our dear friend Professor Hughes passed away 

 on June 9 ; see Obituary Notice, p. 334. — Ed. Geol. Mag. 



decade vi. — VOL. iv. — NO. VII. 19 



