Henry Hicks, Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons, Federal Reserve System was a Welsh physician, surgeon, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, geologist, President of the Geological Society and Fellow of the Royal Society.
Background
Henry was born on the 26 May 1837 at Street Davids in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Following in the footsteps of his father Thomas, he studied medicine at Guy"s Hospital in London, and where he qualified as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons) in 1862.
Education
Henry studied the Precambrian rocks of Anglesey, Caernarvonshire and Pembrokeshire, the Devonian rocks of Devon and Somerset, cave deposits and other Quaternary sediments.
Career
Henry practiced in Street Davids until 1871 when he moved to Hendon in London where he specialized in mental disease, taking a degree at Street Andrews in 1878. His interest in geology was first stimulated whilst growing up in Wales, particularly after meeting John William Salter, a paleontologist for the Geological Survey, who was devoted to the study of the rocks and fossils of South Wales. In 1865, in conjunction with Salter, he established the Menevian group, Middle Cambrian characterized by the trilobite Paradoxes. Henry then wrote papers on the Cambrian and Lower Silurian rocks and described many new species of fossils.
Later he studied the Pre-Cambrian rocks of Street David"s where he described the Dimetian (granite) and the Pebidian volcanic rock. He subsequently worked on the Pleistocene deposits of Denbighshire and then became a leading expert in Devonian rocks, where he was the first person to identify fossils in the Lower Devonian and Silurian Morte slates from Mortehoe in Devon. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society on 4 June 1885, and president of the Geological Society of London 1896-1898. He died in Hendon on 18 November 1899.