Harry Seeley
Harry Seeley | |
---|---|
Born | London, England | 18 February 1839
Died | 8 January 1909 Kensington, London, England | (aged 69)
Nationality | British |
Education | Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge |
Awards | Lyell Medal (1885) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Paleontology |
Harry Govier Seeley (18 February 1839 – 8 January 1909) was a British
Early life
Seeley was born in London on 18 February 1839, the second son of Richard Hovill Seeley, a goldsmith, and his second wife Mary Govier. When his father was declared bankrupt, Seeley was sent to live with a family of piano makers. Between the ages of eleven and fourteen, he went to a day school and then spent the next two years learning to make pianos. He also attended lectures at the Royal School of Mines by Thomas Henry Huxley, Edward Forbes, and other notable scientists. In 1855, with the support of his uncle, Seeley began to study law but shortly gave it up to pursue a career as an actuary. In the late 1850s, he studied English and mathematics at the Working Men's College and served as a secretary for the college's museum. He also worked in the library of the British Museum, where Samuel Pickworth Woodward encouraged him to study geology.[3]
In 1859, Seeley began studies at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and worked as an assistant for Adam Sedgwick at the Woodwardian Museum. He helped curate the museum's fossil collection and began field studies on the local geology. Seeley graduated from Sidney Sussex College in 1863 and joined St John's in 1868 but never took a degree.[4][5]
He turned down positions both with the
He died in Kensington, London and was buried in Brookwood Cemetery. He had married in 1872 Eleanora Jane, daughter of William Mitchell of Bath. Their daughter Maude married Arthur Smith Woodward, FRS.
Dinosaurs
Seeley determined that
His popular book on pterosaurs, Dragons of the Air (1901), found that the development of birds and pterosaurs paralleled each other. His belief that they had a common origin has been proved, for both are archosaurs, just not as close as he thought. He upset Richard Owen's characterization of the pterosaurs as cold-blooded, sluggish gliders, and recognized them as warm-blooded active fliers.
He was elected a
... he will be best remembered, perhaps, for the wonderful collections he made in the Karoo Beds of South Africa and the resulting exhibition in the Natural History branch of the British Museum of the remarkable skeleton of Pareiasaurus[8] and numerous other Anomodont reptiles ....[9]
- see Alfred Brown
Publications
- The Ornithosauria (1870)
- Factors in Life: Three Lectures on Health, Food, Education (1884)
- Manual of Geology: Theoretical and Practical (1885)
- The Freshwater Fishes Of Europe: A History Of Their Genera, Species, Structure, Habits And Distribution (1886)
- The Story of the Earth in Past Ages (1895)
- Dragons of the air : an account of extinct flying reptiles (1901)
References
- doi:10.1038/079314b0.
- ^ "Seeley, Harry Govier". Who's Who. Vol. 59. 1907. p. 1578.
- ^ Secord 2004
- ^ Secord 2004
- ^ "Seeley, Harry Govier (SLY863HG)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- An Exhibition of Original Publications from the Collections of the Linda Hall Library.
- ^ "Library and Archive catalogue". The Royal Society. Retrieved 11 October 2010.
- S2CID 140175334.
- .
Further reading
- Plug, C. (2020). "Seeley, Prof Harry Govier (palaeontology)". S2A3 Biographical Database of Southern African Science.
- Secord, J. A. (2004). "Seeley, Harry Govier". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press.
- "Eminent Living Geologists: Professor H. G. Seeley". The Geological Magazine. 4. Cambridge University Press: 241–252. 1907. S2CID 130020694.
External links
- Works by or about Harry Govier Seeley at Wikisource
- Works by Harry Seeley at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Harry Seeley at Internet Archive
- Dragons of the Air (1901) at HathiTrust
- Works by Harry Seeley at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Michon Scott, "Harry Govier Seeley"
- Harry G. Seeley