Portrait in oils of Joseph Prestwich, by an unknown artist.
School period
College/University
Gallery of Joseph Prestwich
University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom
Prestwich was educated in Reading.
Gallery of Joseph Prestwich
University College, London, England, United Kingdom
Prestwich was educated at University College, London where he studied chemistry and natural philosophy.
Career
Gallery of Joseph Prestwich
1855
Joseph Prestwich Portrait Photograph is a photograph by Paul D Stewart.
Gallery of Joseph Prestwich
Sir Joseph Prestwich (12 March 1812 – 23 June 1896) was a British geologist and businessman, known as an expert on the Tertiary Period and for having confirmed the findings of Boucher de Perthes of ancient flint tools in the Somme valley gravel beds.
Gallery of Joseph Prestwich
Joseph Prestwich (seated on the left) and geological colleagues (Morris, Edwards, and Woods).
Achievements
Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Parks Rd, Oxford OX1 3PW, England, United Kingdom
Joseph Prestwich, British geologist and former president of the Geological Society of London. Statue on permanent display in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
Membership
Royal Society
1853 - 1896
Royal Society, London, England, United Kingdom
Prestwich was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1853.
Geological Society of London
1833 - 1896
Geological Society of London, Freemasons Tavern, Great Queen Street London, WC2, England, United Kingdom
Prestwich became a Fellow of Geological Society in 1833.
Awards
Wollaston Medal
1849
Prestwich was awarded the Wollaston Medal, which is the highest award of the Geological Society of London. This medal is normally given to geologists who have had a significant influence by means of a substantial body of excellent research in either or both pure and applied aspects of the science.
Royal Medal
1865
Prestwich was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society for "the most important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge" and one for "distinguished contributions in the applied sciences", done within the Commonwealth of Nations.
Telford Medal
1873
Prestwich was awarded a Telford Medal for a paper entitled “On the Geological Conditions affecting the Construction of a Tunnel between England and France”.
Prestwich was awarded the Wollaston Medal, which is the highest award of the Geological Society of London. This medal is normally given to geologists who have had a significant influence by means of a substantial body of excellent research in either or both pure and applied aspects of the science.
Prestwich was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society for "the most important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge" and one for "distinguished contributions in the applied sciences", done within the Commonwealth of Nations.
Prestwich was awarded a Telford Medal for a paper entitled “On the Geological Conditions affecting the Construction of a Tunnel between England and France”.
Sir Joseph Prestwich (12 March 1812 – 23 June 1896) was a British geologist and businessman, known as an expert on the Tertiary Period and for having confirmed the findings of Boucher de Perthes of ancient flint tools in the Somme valley gravel beds.
Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Parks Rd, Oxford OX1 3PW, England, United Kingdom
Joseph Prestwich, British geologist and former president of the Geological Society of London. Statue on permanent display in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
On the Occurrence of Flint-Implements, Associated with the Remains of Animals of Extinct Species in Beds of a Late Geological Period, in France at Amiens and Abbeville, and in England
On Underground Temperatures, with Observations on the Conductivity of Rocks, on the Thermal Effects of Saturation and Imbibition, and on a special Source of Heat in Mountain Ranges
Sir Joseph Prestwich Federal was a British geologist and businessman. He is best known for his researches on the Eocene strata of London and Hampshire, and on organic remains in the London clay and the Bagshot beds. He was presented with the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London in 1849.
Background
Ethnicity:
Prestwich was descended from an old Lancashire family.
Joseph Prestwich was born on March 12, 1812, in Clapham, London, England. He was the eldest surviving son of Joseph Prestwich, a wine merchant descended from a long line of Lancashire landowners, and his wife, Catherine.
Education
Prestwich was educated in Paris and Reading before entering University College, London where he studied chemistry and natural philosophy.
Circumstances compelled Joseph Prestwich to enter into commercial life, and until he was sixty years of age he was busily engaged in the City as a wine merchant. He devoted all his leisure to geology. His business journeys enabled him to see and learn much of the general geology of England, Scotland and France, and this so effectively that at the time of his death he ranked as the most eminent of British geologists. As early as 1831 he commenced, during holiday visits, to make a study of the coal-field of Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, and the results of his observations were communicated to the Geological Society of London in 1834 and 1836 and embodied in a memoir published in 1838.
His name is, however, especially known in connexion with his researches on the Eocene strata of the London and Hampshire Basins (1846-1857): he defined the Thanet Sands and the Woolwich and Reading Beds, and studied the sequence of deposits and of organic remains and the method of formation of these and the succeeding strata of London clay and Bagshot Beds.
In the course of his observations he was led to study questions of water supply and published in 1851 A Geological Inquiry respecting the Water-bearing Strata of the Country around London, a work that at once became a standard authority; and his extensive knowledge in that respect procured him a seat on the Royal Commission on Water Supply, appointed in 1866. From 1858 the question of the antiquity of man engaged his attention. On various occasions statements had been made as to the association of flint implements formed by man with the bones of extinct mammals which belonged to more remote periods than those generally assigned for the appearance of the human race on this earth, but the evidence adduced had usually been disregarded by geologists as not affording sufficient proof of the point.
Prestwich, together with Doctor Hugh Falconer and Sir John Evans, saw the desirability of a closer examination of the facts, particularly in regard to the implements discovered by Boucher de Perthes in the gravels of the Somme valley; and their investigations in France and England yielded evidence which proved that man existed contemporaneously with the Pleistocene mammalia (1861 and 1864). In 1865 a Royal Medal was awarded to Prestwich by the Royal Society.
In 1866 he was chosen one of the commissioners appointed to inquire into the several matters relating to coal in the United Kingdom; and he subsequently contributed an important Report on the Quantities of Coal, wrought and unwrought, in the Coalfields of Somersetshire and part of Gloucestershire, and another Report on the Probabilities of finding Coal in the South of England (1871). His researches on the Crag Beds of Suffolk and Norfolk, his report on Brixham Cave, his papers on the Channel Tunnel and the Chesil Bank, among others published during the years 1868-1875, may be mentioned.
Prestwich retired from business in 1872, and two years later he was invited to take the chair of geology at Oxford, vacant through the death of John Phillips. This post he occupied until 1887. During his professorship, he wrote his great work entitled Geology: Chemical, Physical and Stratigraphical (1888).
On leaving Oxford Prestwich spent his remaining years in his country house, Darent-Hulme, Shoreham, Kent, erected by him in 1869. There, although seventy-six years of age, he maintained marvellous activity in geological research, devoting his attention to the superficial deposits of the Darent valley, to the occurrence of palaeolithic flint implements in the valleys and of an earlier type since called eolithic, on the chalk plateau of Kent; he likewise dealt generally with the raised beaches and rubble-drift, of the south of England and their relation to recent changes of level.
His latest publications were Collected Papers on some Controverted Questions of Geology, and On Certain Phenomena belonging to the Close of the Last Geological Period and on their Bearing upon the Tradition of the Flood (1895).
Prestwich spent most of his professional life as a wine merchant but had a life long interest in geology.
Quotations:
"Time is in itself [not] a difficulty, but a time-rate, assumed on very insufficient grounds, is used as a master-key, whether or not it fits, to unravel all difficulties. What if it were suggested that the brick-built Pyramid of Hawara had been laid brick by brick by a single workman? Given time, this would not be beyond the bounds of possibility. But Nature, like the Pharaohs, had greater forces at her command to do the work better and more expeditiously than is admitted by Uniformitarians."
Membership
Prestwich was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1853. He was also a member of the Geological Society of London from 1833.
Royal Society
,
United Kingdom
1853 - 1896
Geological Society of London
,
United Kingdom
1833 - 1896
Connections
In 1870 Prestwich married Grace Anne McCall (nee Milne), niece of Doctor H. Falconer, and author of the Harbour Bar and other works.