William Crawford WilliamsonBorn 24 Nov 1816; died 23 Jun 1895 at age 78. English naturalist who founded modern paleobotany, the study of fossil plants found in sediments and rocks. His father was a geologist and a friend of William Smith, the father of English geology. At age 18, he presented his first paper (1834) on organic remains in the Lias of Yorkshire. The next year, he was appointed curator of the Manchester Natural History Museum while pursuing medical training. He contributed to Lindley and Hutton's Fossil Flora of Great Britain. He practiced medicine from 1842, but still made time for significant scientific work. From 1845 to 1857, he published a notable series of papers on the development of scales and teeth of fish. By his later years, his body of work investigating the structure of fossil plants, especially those found in coal measures, made him an acknowledged master in the field.« |
