King's College, London : Prof. W. T. Gordon

Abstract

PROF. W. T. Gordon retires at the end of the present session from the chair of geology, King's College, London. He joined the staff of the College as lecturer in charge of the then quite small Department of Geology in 1914. In 1921 he became professor of geology, a post beld in the earlier days of the College by charles Lyeh, John Phillips, D. T. Ansted, James and Martin Duncan. It fell to Gordon to organise the expansion of the Department and its work which followed the First World War, and he also served as administrative head of the Department of Geography conducted jointly with the London School of Economics. Throughout his long years of service, Prof. Gordon has been a well-known and well-loved figure in his College and his University, taking a large part in the life and work of both. At the same time he has continued to prosecute his researches into the Scottish Lower Carboniferous flora, begun as a young man in Edinburgh. Not the least of his great services to his College arose from his abiding interest in mineralogy: the Department possesses by virtue of his efforts an unusually fine collection of well-crystallized minerals, and his own collection of gem stones has become justly famous to a long succession of students.