William Johnson Sollas

William Johnson Sollas was a British geologist and anthropologist born May 30, 1849, in Birmingham, England, who died October 20, 1936, in Oxford, England, and who invented a serial sectioning device for studying the internal anatomy of fossils, conducted extensive research on sponges and brachiopods, developed a diffusion column for chemical rock analysis, and led the 1896 Funafuti coral reef boring expedition investigating how coral atolls form; he published more than 180 papers and three books over his career. He held professorships in geology and zoology at University College, Bristol, from 1879, geology at Trinity College Dublin from 1883 to 1897, and geology at the University of Oxford from 1897 until his death in 1936. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1889, won the Bigsby Medal in 1893, the Royal Medal in 1914, served as president of the Geological Society of London from 1908 to 1910, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1907.