Walcot Gibson 1864-1941

Abstract

Walcot Gibson was born at Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, on 24 August 1864. His father was a bank manager from the north country and his mother was Cornish, and they had three sons and one daughter. Gibson was educated at the Bromsgrove School and about 1882 went to Mason College, Birmingham, now the University of Birmingham. Charles Lapworth who had distinguished himself by his great researches in the south of Scotland had just been appointed to the chair of Geology at Mason College and thirty-one years later (1913) he records that Gibson was his first geological pupil. His interest in geology and geological mapping was developed by intimate contact with Lapworth and was sustained by a coterie of ardent amateur geologists, among them Joseph Landon, Fred Cullis and C. J. Gilbert. This period clearly determined Gibson’s choice of a career. After a course at the Royal College of Science he set out in 1889 on Lapworth’s advice for South Africa where he was engaged for two years on mineral surveys in the Rand goldfields and elsewhere. From there he moved to East Africa where he was engaged for another two years on mineral surveys for the East Africa Company. He returned to this country an experienced geologist and surveyor and in 1893 he joined H.M. Geological Survey in which service he remained for thirty-two years until his retirement in 1925. This was an important period in the history of the Geological Survey for owing to strong representations that the old Survey had become obsolete both in topography and geology, the House of Commons in 1891 sanctioned a resurvey of the great South Wales Coalfield on the scale of six inches to the mile. The first mapping of that field initiated by Logan and de la Beche was on the one-inch scale and was completed about 1845, the year in which the Geological Survey was transferred from the Board of Ordnance. The enormous developments which had taken place since the original survey had far outstripped the knowledge of the geological structure of the field and new information had become urgently necessary.