Abstract
GEOLOGISTS and zoologists visiting the British Museum (Natural History) will soon miss the presence, oi Dr. Arthur Smith Woodward, who is about to retire: It was in 1901 that he succeeded Dr. Henry Woodward as keeper of the Geological Department, which he had joined as an assistant in 1882, and in which his whole career has been passed. He leaves the Department in a state of high efficiency, the collections in many branches reflecting the elegance and accuracy of his own personal work. His chief official publication is the four-volume Catalogue of Fossil Fishes, a task which occupied many years, and evinces not only careful systematic work, but also theoretical deductions of high value, not merely in relation to the fishes, but to the vertebrata generally. Dr. Woodward followed up his catalogue with the “Outlines of Vertebrate Palaeontology,” which soon became, and has since remained, the leading text-book on the, subject. He also collaborated with Mr. Sheborn in the “Catalogue of British Fossil Vertebrata.” In connexion with his museum work, Dr. Woodward visited many foreign countries, paying especial attention to the collection of new material, as at Pikermi, in Aragon, and in South America, as well as studying the leading museums of those countries. Few authors have contributed so many papers, and on so wide a range of subjects, to the Geological and Zoological Societies, the Geological Magazine, and the Geologists' Association. He has been president of the Geological and Linnean Societies, the Geologists' Association, and Section C (Geology) of the British, Association, and has found time for more than twenty: years to act as secretary and edit the fine series of volumes issued by the Palaeontographical Society, to which he himself contributed the Monograph on the Fishes of the Chalk. His name is associated with, many important discoveries among the fossil fishes and reptiles of Great Britain, but two of his most noteworthy researches have been in the Weald, in association with Mr. Dawson. The first of these was the first find of mammalian remains in the Wealden beds, and the second the famous Piltdown skull, which Dr. Woodward placed in a new genus, Eoanthropus, making a prediction with regard to its anatomy which was afterwards verified by the remarkable discovery of the ape-like canine tooth, the existence of which he had anticipated.
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Current Topics and Events. Nature 113, 398–402 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/113398a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/113398a0