- W. Brian Harland
W. Brian Harland (1917 – 2003) was an eminent
geologist at Cambridge University,England . He was born in Scarborough, and educated atBootham School inYork and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated in Geological Sciences and took his PhD; from 1950 until his death he was a fellow of Caius. In Cambridge he was instrumental in the establishment of theCambridge Arctic Shelf Programme (CASP). He played an important early role in the advocation of the theory ofcontinental drift and making the first observations of the global occurrence ofglaciation which were to form the foundations ofSnowball Earth theory. He was also a foremost figure in the ongoing maintenance of the InternationalGeologic timescale .He also spent 43 field seasons in the geological mapping of the Polar archipelago of
Spitsbergen , beginning in 1938 and lasting through to the 1980s, leading 29 expeditions. The ice field "Harlandisen" on the main island ofSvalbard is named in his honour. The University retains a collection of some 70000 specimens collected over these years.Harland spent much of the
Second World War teaching atWest China University , and later in life would become a trustee of theNeedham Research Institute . He was deeply interested in the interactions between science, philosophy, and religion, and for most of his life was aQuaker .External links
* [http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/template.cfm?name=Obits2003 Obituary]
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