Name William Lang | Died March 3, 1966 | |
Born 28 September 1878 ( 1878-09-28 ) Institutions University of CambridgeBritish Museum Spouse Georgiana Catherine Dixon Notable awards Lyell Medal (1928), Royal Society (1929) Institution | ||
William Dickson Lang (28 September 1878 – 3 March 1966) was Keeper of the Department of Geology at the British Museum from 1928 until 1938.
Contents
Early life
He was born at Kurnal, India the second son of Edward Tickle Lang and Hebe, the daughter of John Venn Prior and moved to England at the age of one when the family returned. His father was a civil servant, who had been working on the Jumna Canal in the Punjab.
Education
He was educated at Christ's Hospital School, then went to Harrow School in 1894 and Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1898 to read zoology. He matriculated BA in 1902 and MA in 1905.
Career
In 1902 he started as an assistant in the Geology Department of the British Museum in charge of Protozoa, Coelenterates, Sponges and Polyzoa (=Bryozoa). During WWI he was made curator of mosquitos and produced in 1920 "A Handbook on British mosquitos". After the war he returned to the Geology Department and in 1928 became Keeper of Geology in succession to F. A. Bather.
Lang was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 1929. His candidacy citation read: "Distinguished for his knowledge of palaeontology; has applied evolutionary principles to the systematic arrangement of fossil polyzoa and corals, studying the recapitulation of ancestral characters in the post-embryonic growth-stages of compound as well as simple organisms, e.g., 'Brit Mus Catalogue Fossil Bryozoa' (1921, 1922), 'The Pelmatoporinae'. Lang elucidated in detail the faunal and stratigraphical succession of the Lias along the Dorset coast, with special relation to ammonites. He was a proponent of the theory of orthogenesis, believing that several lineages of cribrimorph cheilostome bryozoans evolved progressively thicker and more elaborate skeletal structures which eventually became maladaptive, driving the lineage to extinction. By extending the study of existing British species of mosquitoes to their four larval stages, previously ill-known, he tested the relationships already inferred from imaginal characters.
Personal life
He retired in 1938 and wrote several articles about Mary Anning, the fossil collector. He had married in 1908 Georgiana Catherine Dixon; they had a son and a daughter.