David, Tannatt William Edgeworth

(b. near Cardiff, Wales, 28 January 1858; d. Sydney, Australia, 28 August 1934)

polar exploration, geology.

David was the son of Rev. William David. He was educated at Magdalen College School, Oxford, and Oxford University, graduating B.A. in classics in 1880. He then became interested in geology and, after a period at the Royal School of Mines in London, went to Australia as a field surveyor.

David vigorously set to work on Australian geological problems and became the greatest contributor of his time to the field. He held the chair of geology at the University of Sydney from 1891 to his retirement in 1924. He received numerous honors from Britain and Australia, including a knighthood in 1921.

As the leading geologist in the Shackleton Expedition of 1907–1909, David carried out pioneering fieldwork in Antarctica. In the course of this work he led expeditions to the summit of Mt. Erebus and to the neighborhood of the south magnetic pole. His party covered 1,200 miles on sledges over broken and splintered sea ice and glacier ice without supporting party, dogs, or mechanical aid. The party was dramatically rescued, near exhaustion, in February 1909.

David’s scientific contributions include his early delineation of strata in coalfields of New South Wales; his discoveries in the Hunter River area are a noted classic in Australian geology. His investigations of foundational rocks under the coral atoll of Funafuti (1897), which supplied evidence on Darwin’s theory of coral reef formation, won him election to the Royal Society of London in 1900. David also contributed important evidence on past glaciation in Australia and India, and on fossil evidences of life in Precambrian rocks near Adelaide.

After retirement he set out to compile the first comprehensive account of the geology of the whole Australian continent. By 1931 the work had reached the point where David was able to publish a comprehensive geological map of Australia, along with an up-to-date summary of Australian geological field data. A greatly extended version of this work, which he had planned in detail and started before his death, was completed by his colleagues and is a monumental contribution to Australian geology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

David’s publications up to 1920 are listed in W. N. Benson, “Eminent Living Geologists: Professor Sir T. W. Edgeworth David,” in Geological Magazine, 59 (1922), 4–13. His publications after 1920 are listed in Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, I (1932–1935), 501.

A preliminary version of David’s comprehensive account of the geology of Australia was published as Geological Map of the Commonwealth of Australia (Scale 1:2,999,000). Explanatory Notes to Accompany a New Geological Map of the Commonwealth of Australia (Sydney, 1932). A greatly extended version of this work was published sixteen years after his death as Geological Map of the Commonwealth of Australia, ed, and supp. by W. R. Browne, 3 vols. (1950).

K. E. Bullen