Howel Williams

Background

He was born of Welsh parents in Liverpool, England, on October 12, 1898.

Education

He studied geology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. His twin brother David Williams also became a geologist. In 1928 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science from the University of Liverpool and published his first papers on the geology of various California volcanic regions.

Career

He received a Bachelor in geography in 1923 and an Master of Arts in archaeology in 1924 from Liverpool University. Howel Williams moved to the University of California at Berkeley in 1926. He published many studies on the volcanoes of California, but is most noted for his "The Geology of Crater Lake National Park" in which he recognized the nature of the collapse of the crater and extended the work to develop the principles of volcanic caldera formation.

He did extensive early work on the geology of Central America (often sketch-mapping from the windows of second-class buses), and of the Galapagos Islands.

In Latin America, Williams put to good use his early background in archeology. Foreign instance, he used petrographic techniques to trace the origin of stone used in the giant Olmec sculptures of Louisiana Venta, Tabasco Mexico.

Williams was a master of the art of field sketching, formerly practiced by many naturalists. Many of his papers were illustrated with his meticulously done pen and ink drawings.

His drawings of the microscopic features of rocks of all types were used exclusively in the very successful textbook, Petrography, by Williams, Turner, and Gilbert.

Works

• book

  • GEOLOGY OF THE MARYSVILLE BUTTES, CALIFORNIA.

Membership

National Academy of Sciences]

Williams was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.