22116031911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 18 — Morris, John

MORRIS, JOHN (1810–1886), English geologist and palaeontologist, was born at Homerton, London, on the 19th of February 1810. He was brought up to the business of a pharmaceutical chemist. Early in life he published observations on the Tertiary and Post-Tertiary deposits in the Thames valley, and on fossil plants and various invertebrata, in the Magazine of Natural History, the Annals of Nat. Hist. and other journals. In 1845 he issued his Catalogue of British Fossils (2nd ed., 1854), a work of essential service to geology. He was also author (with John Lycett) of A Monograph of the Mollusca from the Great Oolite (Palaeontographical Soc., 1850–1853). In 1855 he became professor of Geology in University College, London, a post which he held until 1877. In 1868–1870 and 1877–1878 he was president of the Geologists’ Association. He was awarded the Lyell medal by the Geological Society in 1876, and was made Hon. M.A. of Cambridge in 1878 in acknowledgment of his services as deputy Woodwardian professor during the final illness of Sedgwick. He died in London on the 7th of January 1886.