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Alfred Richard Cecil Selwyn

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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ALFRED RICHARD CECIL SELWYN (1824-1902), British geologist, son of the Rev. Townshend Selwyn, Canon of Gloucester, was born at Kilmington in Somerset on the 28th of July 1824. Educated in Switzerland, he there became interested in geology, and in 1845 he joined the staff of the Geological Survey of Great Britain. He was actively engaged in the survey of North Wales and bordering portions of Shropshire, and a series of splendid geological maps resulted from his joint work with A. C. Ramsay and J. B. Jukes. In 1852 he was appointed director of the Geological Survey of Victoria, Australia, where he gave special attention to the gold-bearing rocks, until in 1869 the Colonial Legislature brought the Survey to an abrupt termination. At this date Sir W. E. Logan had just retired from the office of director of the Geological Survey of Canada, and Selwyn was appointed his successor. In this new sphere of activity he continued his geological work with marked success, devoting particular attention to the Pre-Cambrian rocks of Quebec. He retired in 1894. Meanwhile in 1874 he had been elected F.R.S., in 1876 he was awarded the Murchison Medal of ,the Geological Society of London, and he was created C.M.G. in 1886 for his distinguished work as assistant to the Canadian Commissioners at the exhibitions in Philadelphia (1876), Paris (1878) and London (1886). He retired to Vancouver in British Columbia, where he died on the 19th of October 1902.

See memoir with portrait in Geol. Mag. (Feb. 1899).