Gustaaf Adolf Frederik Molengraaff

Gustaaf Adolf Frederik Molengraaff was a Dutch geologist born February 27, 1860, in Nijmegen, Netherlands, who died March 26, 1942, and who became an authority on the geology of South Africa and the Dutch East Indies, discovering the Bushveld Igneous Complex while mapping the Transvaal, specializing in petrography and crystallography, and conducting geological expeditions to Borneo in 1894 and to Celebes and Timor between 1910 and 1911; he also described the newly discovered Cullinan diamond for South Africa central bank. He earned a master degree from Leiden University in botany and geology and a doctorate from Utrecht University in 1886 with a thesis on the geology of Sint Eustatius, taught at the University of Amsterdam from 1888, served as state geologist of the Transvaal Republic from 1897, and held a professorship at the Delft University of Technology from 1906 to 1930. He was elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1906, served as president of the Geological Society of South Africa, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1936; he also proposed the use of tin identity tags for soldiers during the Boer War, a practice later adopted worldwide.