Abstract
DR. T. S. WESTOLL, who is succeeding Prof. Hickling in the chair of geology in King‘s College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, has had a distinguished career in geology and vertebrate palæontology. Graduating in 1932 in the College to which he now returns, he commenced research on the famous fish fauna of the Permian rocks of that area. He was awarded a Ph.D. and a senior research award of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, with which he proceeded to University College, London, to work with Prof. D. M. S. Watson. During his three years in that position, he visited many of the principal museums in Europe and commenced the work to which he has since contributed most widely, namely, the further study of the Old Red Sandstone and its faunas, particularly in the north of Scotland. In 1937, with grants from the Geological and Royal Societies, he spent several months in the United States and Canada, visiting the principal universities and museums, and commancing stratigraphical and palseontological field-work in the Gaspè Peninsula, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The latter important work was interrupted by his election to a senior lectureship at Aberdeen, though not before it had led to important results both in the stratigraphy and palaeontology of the Devonian and Carboniferous rocks of that region. In Aberdeen, field-work on the Old Red Sandstone of various areas of north-east Scotland, the Orkneys and Shetlands and on their faunas has been actively continued, along with investigations of the morphology and relationships of the various groups of fishes and the origin of tetrapod structures. This work has become of international repute. In 1941 the University of Aberdeen conferred on him the degree of D.Sc. In the following year Dr. Westoll was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a niember of the New York Academy of Sciences. In 1947 he was invited to the Princeton Bicentenary Celebrations to participate in the conference on paloentology, genetics and evolution, and afterwards to the Paris conference on palæontology.
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Geology at Newcastle-upon-Tyne : Dr. T. S. Westoll. Nature 161, 1003–1004 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/1611003d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1611003d0