Henry De la Beche

Sir Henry De la Beche was an English geologist and palaeontologist born February 10, 1796, in London, who died April 13, 1855, in London, and who collaborated with William Conybeare on influential research into ichthyosaur and plesiosaur anatomy in 1821 before becoming the first director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and the first president of the Palaeontographical Society. He founded the Museum of Practical Geology on Jermyn Street, donating his personal library to it in 1843, and established a museum complex combining the Geological Survey offices, the Museum of Practical Geology, the Royal School of Mines and the Mining Record Office, opened in 1851; he also served as president of the Geological Society of London from 1848 to 1849 and published works including A Geological Manual in 1831 and The Geological Observer in 1851. His 1830 watercolor Duria Antiquior, a depiction of prehistoric marine life in ancient Dorset, became one of the most reproduced early paleoart images. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1819, was knighted in 1842, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1855.