Professor

Mervyn Herbert Nevil Story Maskelyne
Portrait of Neville Story-Maskelyne taken by Henry Fox Talbot
Born(1823-09-03)3 September 1823
Basset Down House, Wroughton, Wiltshire, England
Died20 May 1911(1911-05-20) (aged 87)
Basset Down House, Wroughton, Wiltshire, England
Alma materWadham College, Oxford
Known forMeteorite classification
SpouseThereza Dillwyn Llewelyn
AwardsWollaston Medal (1893)
Fellow of Wadham
Scientific career
FieldsMineralogy
InstitutionsBritish Museum

Mervyn Herbert Nevil Story Maskelyne (3 September 1823 – 20 May 1911) was an English geologist and politician.[1][2]

Scientific career

Educated at Wadham College, Oxford, Maskelyne taught mineralogy and chemistry at Oxford from 1851, before becoming a professor of mineralogy, 1856–95. He was Keeper of Minerals at the British Museum from 1857 to 1880.[3] He was made an honorary Fellow of Wadham in 1873.

Maskelyne was also a pioneer of photography and an associate of Fox Talbot.

The meteoritic mineral maskelynite was named after him.

Family

Mervyn was the eldest son of Antony Mervin Reeve Story and Margaret Maskelyne, the daughter of the Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne.[3] The family adopted the name of Maskelyne on Nevil's coming of age as they had inherited that family's estate at Basset Down in Wiltshire.

Mervyn married Thereza Mary Dillwyn-Llewelyn (1834 – 21 February 1926) - Welsh astronomer and pioneer in scientific photography - on 29 June 1858.

Their daughter Mary married writer and politician Hugh Oakeley Arnold-Forster on 29 July 1885, and Hugh and Mary's granddaughter Vanda Morton published Nevil's biography in 1987 (see references). Their daughter Thereza was an advocate for domestic science who married physicist Arthur William Rucker in 1892.[4]

Political career

He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Cricklade[3] as a Liberal, 1880–1886, and as Liberal Unionist, 1886–1892, and a member of Wiltshire County Council, 1889–1904.

Selected publications

  • A guide to the collection of minerals (1862)
  • Mineralogical notes (1863)
  • Index to the collection of minerals: with references to the table cases in which the species to which they belong are exhibited at the British Museum (1866)
  • Mineralogical notices (1871)
  • Crystallography: Treatise on the Morphology of Crystals (1895) (Kessinger Publishing January 2008 ISBN 0-548-82536-X)
  • Maskelyne, Nevil Story (c. 1863). Catalogue of the Collection of Meteorites exhibited in the Mineral Department of the British Museum. London: Woodfall & Kinder.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1912). "Story-Maskelyne, Mervyn Herbert Nevil" . Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  2. ↑ "Maskelyne, Mervyn Herbert Nevil Story". Who's Who. Vol. 59. 1907. p. 1188.
  3. 1 2 3 Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1922). "Story-Maskelyne, Mervyn Herbert Nevil" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 32 (12th ed.). London & New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company. p. 579.
  4. ↑ Matthew, H. C. G.; Harrison, B., eds. (23 September 2004). "The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. ref:odnb/48425. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/48425. Retrieved 3 March 2023. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  • Vanda Morton : Oxford rebels : the life and friends of Nevil Story Maskelyne 1823–1911 : pioneer Oxford scientist, photographer and politician, 1987 ISBN 0-86299-456-X
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