Abstract
ON November 16, the centenary occurs of the birth of the distinguished geologist Frederick Wollaston Hutton, who together with Ferdinand von Hochstetter (1829-84), Sir John F. J. von Haast (1824-87) and Sir James Hector (1834-1907), laid the foundations of our knowledge of the geology of New Zealand. Hutton was born at Gate Burton, Lincolnshire, being the second son of the Rev. H, F. Hutton. Educated at Southwell Grammar School and the Naval Academy, Gosport, he spent three years as a midshipman in the India Mercantile Marine and then entered the Army. He served in the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, and afterwards at Sandhurst gained a liking for geology from Prof. Thomas Rupert Jones (1819-1911). Leaving the Army in 1866, he went to New Zealand. In 1871 he became an assistant on the New Zealand Geological Survey, and two years later was made Government geologist of Otago. In 1877 he was appointed professor of natural science at the University of Otago and in 1880 settled in Christchurch as a professor in the University of New Zealand. Besides a large number of scientific papers, he published “Darwinism and Lamarckism” (in 1899), “The Lesson of Evolution” (in 1902) and “Animals of New Zealand” (in 1904). After an absence of nearly forty years, he revisited England, and was on his way back to New Zealand in the S.S. Rimutaka when he died at the Cape on October 27, 1905. After his death, a subscription was raised for the endowment of a bronze medal in his honour, and for the furtherance of research.
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Frederick Wollaston Hutton, F.R.S. (1836–1905). Nature 138, 833 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138833c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138833c0