Great Geologists | 101
The Oxfordian “Corallian” succession exposed between Osmington Mills and Ringstead Bay on the British
Dorset Coast. The stratigraphy of this succession was of particular interest to Arkell and close to his summer
holiday home and location for much of his writing “Faraways”.
considerable material including the Arabian American Oil
Company (now Saudi Aramco) who at that time were getting
to grips with the economically important Jurassic stratigraphy
of Saudi Arabia. At their invitation, Arkell was able to visit that
country and also made visits to Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia in
the early 1950s.
His travel and correspondence in the post-war years placed
him in an ideal position to undertake his monumental
synthesis, the Jurassic Geology of the World. This is both a
critical review of an extensive and potentially bewildering publis
framework.
In the early autumn of 1956 Arkell suffered a severe stroke that
left him partially paralysed. He continued with his research,
but in April 1958 he passed away within a few hours of a
second stroke at the young age of 53. With his passing a
major contributor to stratigraphic geology was lost. His many
and varied publications had seen him, amongst many other
honours, elected to the Royal Society in 1947 and receive
the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society of London in 1949.
A shy, reserved man, his legacy was to link excellent factual
descriptions to regional synthesis using well considered
biostratigraphy as a framework, a process that remains as valid
today as it did in the mid-20th century.
REFERENCES
This essay has drawn upon information from the following
sources:
Cox, L.R. 1958. William Jocelyn Arkell 1904 – 1958. Biographical
Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 4, 1-14.
https://www.ogg.rocks/william-j-arkell