author
Thomas McKenny Hughes
1832–1917
A Welsh geologist with a taste for fieldwork, caves, and big questions about the earth, he spent decades teaching at Cambridge and helping shape one of Britain’s great geology museums. His life joined scientific curiosity with lively public work, from the Geological Survey to books that made geology feel immediate and human.
1 Audiobook
Notes on the Fenland; with A Description of the Shippea Man
by Thomas McKenny Hughes
About the author
Born in Aberystwyth on 17 December 1832, he was the son of Joshua Hughes, who later became bishop of St Asaph. He studied at Leamington, Llandovery, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he came under the influence of the geologist Adam Sedgwick.
After a short period as secretary to the British consul at Rome, he joined the Geological Survey in 1861. In 1873 he succeeded Sedgwick as Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge, a post he held until his death in 1917. He was known not only as a geologist but also for work touching archaeology and speleology, and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1889.
He helped build geology into a vigorous field at Cambridge and was closely connected with the long effort that led to the Sedgwick Museum. He also co-edited The Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, preserving the story of one of the great figures who had shaped his own scientific life. Thomas McKenny Hughes died in Cambridge on 9 June 1917.