William Thomas Blanford

William Thomas Blanford was an English geologist and naturalist born October 7, 1832, in London, England, who died June 23, 1905, in London, and who spent twenty-seven years with the Geological Survey of India from 1854 to 1882, conducting fieldwork across coalfields and volcanic regions before becoming, after retirement, editor of a major zoological series. He discovered ice-borne boulders in the Talcher strata providing evidence of ancient glaciation across Gondwanaland, described thirty-six new reptile species and three amphibian species between 1870 and 1881, served as president of the Geological Society of London in 1888, and edited The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma, described as his most remembered work, alongside Observations on the Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia in 1870 and the co-authored Manual of the Geology of India in 1879. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1874, received the Royal Medal in 1901 and was made a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire in 1904, and he received the Wollaston Medal in 1883.