Henry Benedict Medlicott

Henry Benedict Medlicott was an Irish geologist born August 3, 1829, in Loughrea, County Galway, Ireland, who died April 6, 1905, and who joined the Geological Survey of India in March 1854, taught geology at Thomason College of Civil Engineering in Roorkee from that year, and succeeded Thomas Oldham as head of the Survey Department of Geology on April 1, 1876, a post upgraded from Superintendent to Director in 1885 before his retirement in April 1887. He coauthored the Manual of the Geology of India in 1879 with William Thomas Blanford, is credited with having suggested the name Gondwana for Permian formations in India, and determined the geological separation of the Cambrian Vindhyan region from the Gondwana formation. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1877, served as president of the Asiatic Society of Bengal from 1879 to 1881, was awarded the Indian Mutiny Medal for Special Service in 1857, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1888.