Great Geologists | 125
Permian sediments of the Kapp Starostin Formation on Spitsbergen.
Brian Harland
Many geoscientists would be more than content if they made a notable
contribution in one field of geology. The Cambridge-based academic and Arctic
explorer Brian Harland made telling contributions in at least three fields, as well as
being a remarkable geological “all-rounder,” teacher, scientific administrator, and,
as his obituary in The Independent newspaper noted, “phenomenally productive
investigator of the history of the Earth.”
Walter Brian Harland (he preferred to use his middle name) was born in
Scarborough in 1917. Situated on the Yorkshire coast of England, the local area
is noted for its outcrops of Jurassic strata. Whilst still a boy, Harland developed
a love for fossil collecting along the Yorkshire coast and at the age of thirteen,
he discovered a spectacular partial skeleton of a fossil marine crocodile,
Steneosaurus. This discovery made the national press and the specimen now
resides in The Natural History Museum, London. An auspicious start to the
career of a geologist! When sent to boarding school near Malvern near the Welsh
Borders, he taught himself how to make a geological map and set about mapping
this interesting area of Pre-Cambrian and Paleozoic geology. In 1935, he began
his academic geological studies at the University of Cambridge, graduating with
first class honours in 1938.
1938 also saw Harland take part in his first research expedition to Spitsbergen,
the largest island in the mountainous archipelago of Svalbard in the Norwegian
sector of the Arctic Ocean. The geological investigation of these islands
would be synonymous with his name — he participated in no less than 43
Brian Harland with expedition supplies at
a field base in Spitsbergen in the 1938.
Photograph provided by and used with the
permission of the Sedgwick Museum of
Earth Sciences.