Charles Lapworth

Charles Lapworth was an English geologist born September 20, 1842, in Faringdon, Berkshire, England, who died March 13, 1920, in Birmingham, England, and who pioneered faunal analysis using index fossils, identified and named the Ordovician geological period as a new division between the Cambrian and Silurian, and resolved the Highlands Controversy over the structure of Scotland rocks through innovative mapping and fossil analysis techniques. He worked as headmaster of the Episcopal Church School in Galashiels from 1864 to 1875 and as an assistant at Madras College, St Andrews, before becoming the first professor of geology at Mason Science College in Birmingham from 1881 to 1913. He was awarded the Bigsby Medal in 1887, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1888, won the Royal Medal in 1891, served as president of the Geological Society of London from 1902 to 1904, received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Aberdeen and Glasgow, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1899.