William Thomas Blanford (7 October 183223 June 1905) was an English geologist and naturalist. He is best remembered as the editor of a major series on The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma.

Biography

Blanford was born in London to William Blanford and Elizabeth Simpson. His father owned a factory next to their house on Bouverie street, Whitefriars. He was educated in private schools in Brighton (until 1846) and Paris (1848). He joined his family business in carving and gilding and studied at the School of Design in Somerset House. He then spent a year in the mining school (Bergakademie) at Freiberg, Saxony, and towards the close of 1854 both he and his brother obtained posts on the Geological Survey of India. In that service he remained for twenty-seven years, retiring in 1882. After his retirement he took up editorship of The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma series.thumb|left|PortraitHe was engaged in various parts of India, in the Raniganj coalfield, in Bombay, and in the coalfield near Talcher, where boulders considered to have been ice-borne were found in the Talcher strata (Talchir tillite)—a remarkable discovery confirmed by subsequent observations of other geologists in equivalent strata (Permian) elsewhere across Gondwanaland. In 1860 he went to Burma to study an extinct volcano, Puppadoung and in 1862 he took an interest in the Deccan Traps. In 1867 he joined an expedition to Abyssinia, the results of which were published in Observation on the Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia (1870). accompanying the army to Magdala and back; and in 1871–1872 he was appointed a member of the Persian Boundary Commission His attention was given not only to geology but to zoology, and especially to the land gastropods and to the vertebrates. and three new species of amphibians.

In 1883 he married Ida Gertrude Bellhouse, and settled at Bedford Gardens, Campden Hill. He died at his home at the age of 72 in Bedford Gardens, Campden Hill, in London on 23 June 1905 – a genus of terrestrial gastropod mollusks in the family Pomatiopsidae

  • Calandrella blanfordi – Blanford's short-toed lark
  • Bunopus blanfordii – Blanford's ground gecko
  • Acanthodactylus blanfordii – Blanford's fringe-fingered lizard
  • Vulpes cana – Blanford's fox

References

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  • Anon. (1905) Obituary: William Thomas Blanford. Bulletin of the American Geographical Society. 37(11):689-690.
  • Thomas George Bond Howes (1907) Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Vol. 79(535) (1907):xxvii-xxxi.

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  • portrait and obituary
  • Chrono-Biographical Sketch: William T. Blanford<!-- bot-generated title -->
  • Eastern Persia: An account of the Journeys of the Persian Boundary Commission