Wollaston Medal winners

William Maurice "Doc" Ewing (May 12, 1906 – May 4, 1974) was an American geophysicist and oceanographer.Ewing has been described as a pioneering geophysicist who worked on the research of seismic reflection and refraction in ocean basins, ocean bottom photography, submarine sound transmission (including the SOFAR channel), deep sea core samples of the ocean bottom, theory and observation of earthquake surface waves, fluidity of the Earth's core, generation and propagation of microseisms, submarine explosion seismology, marine gravity surveys, bathymetry and sedimentation, natural radioactivity of ocean waters and sediments, study of abyssal plains and submarine canyons.

Gustaaf Adolf Frederik Molengraaff (27 February 1860 – 26 March 1942) was a Dutch geologist, biologist and explorer. He became an authority on the geology of South Africa and the Dutch East Indies.
Gustaaf Molengraaff studied mathematics and physics at Leiden University. From 1882 he studied at Utrecht University. As a student he made his first journey overseas when he joined the 1884–1885 expedition to the Dutch Antilles led by Willem Frederik Reinier Suringar and Karl Martin. He became PhD with a thesis on the geology of Sint Eustatius. He studied crystallography in Munich, where he also took the opportunity to study the geology of the Alps nearby.
In 1888 Molengraaff took a job as a teacher at the University of Amsterdam. Before his assignment courses in geology were given by the chemist Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff. During his assignment in Amsterdam, Molengraaff travelled to South Africa to study gold deposits (1891) and to Borneo (1894) where he explored large parts of the inland. Teaching at Amsterdam was not to his liking, because there were too little materials and students available.
In 1897 Molengraaff became "state geologist" of the Transvaal Republic. His task was to start the geological survey of the Transvaal. While mapping the Transvaal he discovered the Bushveld complex. In 1900 he got involved in the Second Boer War and had to return to the Netherlands. This gave him time to write a report on the geology of the Transvaal, and travel to Celebes, where he (again) studied gold deposits.
Due to his reputation as a geologist he could return to South Africa in 1901 to work as a geological consultant. One of his assignments was to describe the newly found Cullinan diamond for the Central Bank of South Africa. Meanwhile the Boer War still had his attention. One of his ideas was to give each soldier a small tin identity card, which later became practice in armies around the world.
In 1906 he became professor at Delft University and this time he got enough resources and students to make his work successful. The same year he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1910-1911 he led a geological expedition to Timor. His research at Delft was mainly on the material collected during that expedition, and on the geology of the Netherlands. In 1922 he was a guide, along with A L Hall, of the Shaler Memorial Expedition to South Africa, organized by Harvard University. On the expedition he met Alexander Du Toit, both geologists were among the (at that time rare) supporters of Alfred Wegeners' continental drift theory.
Molengraaff was a close friend of W. F. Gisolf, who named his youngest son after him but died in a Japanese concentration camp.
Molengraaff retired in 1930.

Laurent-Guillaume de Koninck (3 May 1809 – 16 July 1887) was a Belgian palaeontologist and chemist, born at Leuven.
He studied medicine in the university of his native town, and in 1831 he became assistant in the chemical schools. He pursued the study of chemistry in Paris, Berlin and Gießen, and was subsequently engaged in teaching the science at Ghent and Liège. In 1856 he was appointed professor of chemistry in the Liège University, and he retained this post until the close of his life.About the year 1835 he began to devote his leisure to the investigation of the Carboniferous fossils around Liège, and ultimately he became distinguished for his researches on the palaeontology of the Palaeozoic rocks, and especially for his descriptions of the molluscs, brachiopods, crustaceans and crinoids of the Carboniferous limestone of Belgium. In recognition of this work the Wollaston medal was awarded to him in 1875 by the Geological Society of London, and in 1876 he was appointed professor of palaeontology at Liège. In 1882, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.He was awarded the Clarke Medal by the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1886.Publications:

Eléments de chimie inorganique (1839)
Description des animaux fossiles qui se trouvent dans le terrain Carbonifère de Belgique (1842–1844, supp. 1851)
Recherches sur les animaux fossiles (1847, 1873)See Notice sur LG de Koninck, by E Dupont; Annuaire de l'Aced. roy. de Belgique (1891), with portrait and bibliography.

Paul Frédéric Joseph Fourmarier (1877—1970) was a Belgian geologist and specialist in tectonics and stratigraphy, after whom the Fourmarierite mineral is named.Fourmarier was born in La Hulpe, Province of Brabant, Belgium and studied at the University of Liège, graduating in 1899. He became a professor of geology at the university in 1920.He won the Wollaston Medal in 1957 and the Penrose Gold Medal in 1952.

Charles Eugene Barrois (21 August 1851 – 5 November 1939) was a French geologist and palaeontologist.

Xavier Le Pichon (born 18 June 1937 in Qui Nhơn, French protectorate of Annam (later South Vietnam and today Vietnam)) is a French geophysicist. Among many other contributions, he is known for his comprehensive model of plate tectonics (1968), helping create the field of plate tectonics. In 1968 he combined the kinematic ideas of W. J. Morgan, D. McKenzie and R. L. Parker with the large data sets collected by Lamont, and especially with the respective magnetic profiles, to show that Plate Tectonics could accurately describe the evolution of the major ocean basins. He is professor at the Collège de France, holder of the Chair of Geodynamics (1986–2008). He is a lifelong devout Catholic, and has come to think of caring attention to others' weakness as an essential quality that allowed humanity to evolve. He lives with his wife and has five children and eleven grandchildren.

Gabriel Auguste Daubrée MIF FRS FRSE (25 June 1814 – 29 May 1896) was a French geologist, best known for applying experimental methods to structural geology. He served as the director of the École des Mines as well as the president of the French Academy of Sciences.

Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart (French: [adɔlf teodɔːʁ bʁɔ̃ɲaːʁ]) FRS FRSE FGS (14 January 1801 – 18 February 1876) was a French botanist. He was the son of the geologist Alexandre Brongniart and grandson of the architect, Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart. Brongniart's pioneering work on the relationships between extinct and existing plants has earned him the title of father of paleobotany. His major work on plant fossils was his Histoire des végétaux fossiles (1828–37). He wrote his dissertation on the Buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae), an extant family of flowering plants, and worked at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris until his death. In 1851, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Brongn. when citing a botanical name.

Robert Minard Garrels (August 24, 1916 – March 8, 1988) was an American geochemist. Garrels applied experimental physical chemistry data and techniques to geology and geochemistry problems. The book Solutions, Minerals, and Equilibria co-authored in 1965 by Garrels and Charles L. Christ revolutionized aqueous geochemistry.
Garrels earned a bachelor's degree in geology from the University of Michigan in 1937. He went on to earn an M.S. degree from Northwestern University in 1939, his thesis work was on iron ores of Newfoundland in 1938. His Ph.D. was awarded in 1941 based on lab studies of complex formation between lead and chloride ions in aqueous solution.

Antoine François Alfred Lacroix (4 February 1863 – 12 March 1948) was a French mineralogist and geologist. He was born in Mâcon, Saône-et-Loire.