In Memoriam: John Wesley Judd

Abstract

(1840–1916.) The death, in fulness of years, of Professor J. W. Judd, which took place on March 3rd, 1916, leaves a memory of a wide range of observational work, very great powers of exposition, and a kindly spirit constantly made manifest in the encouragement and advancement of younger men. The biography and bibliography issued in his lifetime in the Geological Magazine (1905, p. 385) renders a detailed account of his career unnecessary. The present notice is a tribute to his contributions to our knowledge of the stratigraphy of Yorkshire and of neighbouring districts, and an expression of the loss felt throughout the British Isles by those privileged to receive his advice or to work with him in the laboratory and the field. After a varied apprenticeship in science as a schoolmaster and an analyst, in Sheffield steel works, the result of a railway accident forced Judd towards an occupation that kept him in the open air. His first geological paper appeared in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London in 1867, “On the Strata which form the base of the Lincolnshire Wolds,” in which he was able to show that marine representatives of the Neocomian beds of the Continent occur in England. In two vertical sections, he compared the strata at Louth in Lincolnshire with those of Speeton Cliff. In the same year he was invited to revise the Jurassic strata in Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire and Rutlandshire for the Geological Survey. A memorable paper on “The Speeton Clay” …