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Darwin Correspondence Project

William Lonsdale

1794–1871

Geologist. Served the Geological Society of London, 1829–42, first as curator and librarian, and after 1838 as assistant secretary and librarian. Suggested that fossils, alongside other factors, were a reliable basis for estimating the age of geological strata.

Sources

DSB

ODNB.

Bibliography

DSB: Dictionary of scientific biography. Edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie and Frederic L. Holmes. 18 vols. including index and supplements. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1970–90.

ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.

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