Background
He was born in Kingston upon Hull, the eldest of nine children. His father was an unsuccessful merchant. Ward was educated at the Liverpool Institute and Mostyn House, but his formal schooling ended when his father became bankrupt.
He was born in Kingston upon Hull, the eldest of nine children. His father was an unsuccessful merchant. Ward was educated at the Liverpool Institute and Mostyn House, but his formal schooling ended when his father became bankrupt.
Liverpool Institute; Spring Hill College (Congregationalist). Universities of Berlin and Gottingen. Trim College Cambridge Master of Arts London (gold medal), 1874.
Senior Moralist, Cambridge, 1875.
Science Doctorate. Cambridge, 1SS7. Honourable LL. Doctorate. Edinburgh, 1891.
Honourable Doctor of Science Oxford, 190S.
Ward was a man of a singularly attractive nature. Wide in his sympathies and culture, fond of art, though even more happy among beautiful scenery, and an enthusiastic geologist. In 1865, Ward was appointed to the geological survey, and for some time worked in Yorkshire on the millstone, grit, and coal measures near Sheffield, Penistone, and Leeds.
In 1869 Ward was transferred to the Lake district, where for the next eight years he surveyed the area around Keswick.
In 1877, Ward was transferred to Newcastle to examine the lower carboniferous rocks in that region. At the end of 1878, Ward he retired from the survey.
In December 1878, after being ordained as a minister, Ward assumed the curacy of Saint John"s Church in Keswick. Early in 1880, Ward was appointed vicar of Rydal.
Ward died on 15 April of the same year.
Ward was among the first to appreciate the importance of Clifton Sorby"s method of using the microscope for the study of the composition and structures of rocks, and applied it to the old lavas and ash-beds of the Lake district. He advocated Sir Andrew Crombie Ramsay"s hypothesis of the glacial origin of lake basins, applying it to those in his own district, and put forward views in regard to metamorphism which at that time would find few supporters. But his excellent work in surveying the northern part of the Lake district will always give him a high place among field geologists.
Ward defended a philosophy of personalistic panpsychism based on his research in physiology and psychology which he defined as a "spiritualistic monism". Ward"s philosophical views have a close affinity to the pluralistic idealism of Leibniz.
Angling, gardening, field natural history.