Alfred Harker

Alfred Harker was an English geologist born February 18, 1859, in Hull, Yorkshire, England, who died July 28, 1939, and who, alongside other British geologists, pioneered the use of thin sections and petrographic microscopes in interpretive petrology, conducted extensive geological mapping of western Scotland and the Isle of Skye while working with the Geological Survey of Scotland from 1895 to 1905, and assembled the Harker Collection of some 42,000 rock specimens that became the basis of the Sedgwick Museum petrological holdings. He served Cambridge University as demonstrator in geology from 1884, lecturer at Newnham College from 1892, university lecturer from 1904, and reader in petrology from 1918 until his retirement in 1931, publishing Petrology for Students in 1895 and The Tertiary Igneous Rocks of Skye in 1904. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1902, won the Murchison Medal in 1907, served as president of the Geological Society of London from 1916 to 1918, won the Royal Medal in 1935, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1922.