Died 31 January 1954 | ||
Dr Thomas Matthew Finlay FRSE EGS (1879-1954) was a Scottish geologist and palaeontologist.
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Life
He was born at Sotrigarth in Sandwick, Shetland on 17 September 1879, the son of Frederick Souis Finlay (1852-1918) and his wife Mary Bruce Smith (1857-1937). From 1891 he lived with his maternal grandfather, Robert Smith, still in Sandwick.
He was sent to Edinburgh in 1900/1901 and lodged in a tenement at 99 Montgomery Street at the top of Leith Walk. Here he attended Edinburgh University graduating MA in 1903. He then travelled to South Africa where he taught in the Natal 1903 to 1910, before returning to Edinburgh University as a lecturer in Botany.
In the First World War he served as a captain in the Scottish Horse and was wounded in action. On his return to Edinburgh he began lecturing in Palaeontology. In 1927 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Thomas James Jehu, Robert Campbell, John Horne and Murray Macgregor.
He died at home in Chalmers Crescent in Edinburgh on 31 January 1954.
Publications
Family
He married Flora Rowan (1879-1949) in Cowdenbeath in 1914. They had three children: Frederick Henry Rowan Finlay (1915-1973); Margaret Haddow Finlay (1917-1958); and Robert Finlay (1923-1979).