W. Brian Harland
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| Walter Brian Harland | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 22, 1917 Scarborough, United Kingdom |
| Died | November 1, 2003 (aged 86) Cambridge, United Kingdom |
| Residence | United Kingdom |
| Nationality | British |
| Fields | Geology |
| Institutions | University of Cambridge |
| Alma mater | Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge |
| Notable awards | 1968 Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society |
W. Brian Harland (1917 – 2003) was a geologist at the University of Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences, England.[1] In 1968, he was honoured with the Royal Geographical Society Gold Medal for Arctic exploration and research.
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[edit] Personal background
Harland was born in Scarborough, and educated at Bootham School in York and Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated in Geological Sciences and took his PhD; from 1950 until his death. He was deeply interested in the interactions between science, philosophy, and religion, and for most of his life was a Quaker.[citation needed]
[edit] Professional background
In Cambridge, Harland was instrumental in the establishment of the Cambridge Arctic Shelf Programme (CASP).[citation needed] He played an early role in the avocation of the theory of continental drift and making the first observations of the global occurrence of glaciation, which were to form the foundations of Snowball Earth theory. He was also a figure in the ongoing maintenance of the International Geologic timescale.[citation needed]
He also spent 43 field seasons in the geological mapping of the Polar archipelago of Svalbard, beginning in 1938 and ending in the 1980s, leading 29 expeditions. The ice field "Harlandisen" on the main island of Spitsbergen is named in his honour.[citation needed] The University retains a collection of some 70,000 specimens collected over these years.[citation needed]
Harland spent much of the Second World War teaching at West China University, know known as the Chengdu University of Technology, and later in life would become a trustee of the Needham Research Institute and a fellow of Caius.[citation needed]
[edit] Awards
In 1968, Dr. W. Brian Harland received the Royal Geographical Society Gold Medal for Arctic exploration and research.[2]
[edit] References
- ^ "W. B. Harland - Obituaries, News". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/w-b-harland-730407.html. Retrieved 2011-10-29.
- ^ Gold Medal recipients, Royal Geographic Society. Retrieved 2011-02-02.
[edit] External links
- Geological Society of London. Walter Brian Harland
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