Background
Alexander Henry Green was born on the 10th of October 1832 at Maidstone, the son of Thomas Sheldon Green, master of the Ashby Grammar School.
Alexander Henry Green was born on the 10th of October 1832 at Maidstone, the son of Thomas Sheldon Green, master of the Ashby Grammar School.
Alexander Henry Green was educated partly at his father's school, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and afterwards at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated as sixth wrangler in 1855 and was elected a fellow of his college.
In 1861 Alexander Henry Green joined the Geological Survey of Great Britain, and surveyed large areas of the midland counties, Derbyshire and Yorkshire. He wrote (wholly or in part) memoirs on the Geology of Banbury (1864), of Stockport (1866), of North Derbyshire (1869, 2nd ed. 1887), and of the Yorkshire Coal-field (1878). His time at the Survey was relatively short, only covering 13 years, but his output was considerable. He was involved in mapping a large number of sheets at one and six inch to the mile scales and producing the memoirs for Banbury, Stockport, Tadcaster, Dewsbury, Barnsley and north Derbyshire.
However, was probably best known for his substantial contribution to the understanding of the geology of the coalfields and for the 800 page Geology of the Yorkshire Coalfields, the largest and most important coalfield memoir published by the Survey. Green became regarded as one of the leading authorities on the geology of coal.
Alexander Henry Green's fieldwork was accurate and meticulous and his sketches are works of art. The 1973 disaster at the Lofthouse colliery in Wakefield could possibly have been averted if the relevant information held in one of Green's notebooks and on his field map had been seen and understood.
In 1874 Alexander Henry Green retired from the Geological Survey, having been appointed professor of geology in the Yorkshire College at Leeds; in 1885 he became also professor of mathematics, while for many years he held the lectureship on geology at the school of military engineering at Chatham. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1886, and two years later was chosen professor of geology in the University of Oxford.
Alexander Henry Green studied parts of the Lake District and Donegal and was an early convert to the 'heresy' that the surface of the ground owes its form mainly to the actions of rain and rivers. As an expert on coal and water supply, Green also visited Newfoundland and South Africa, the results of which were considered major contributions to the subject.
Unfortunately he never recovered fully from a bout of severe influenza in 1895 and died in 1896 at the relatively young age of 64.
Green was a Fellow of the Royal Society.