History of NUI Galway, the Science Faculty and associated scientists.

William King (1809-1886)

William King was the first to recognise the significance of the Neanderthal fossils and together with Thomas Rowney, Professor of Chemistry at Galway, debunked a putative fossil called eozoon that was thought to be the world’s earliest living thing. 

Willaim King was born in Sunderland in 1809.  He was educated in the best of the local schools and had a keen interest in books and natural history together with a desire to collect.  In 1840 he was appointed curator of what is now the Hancock Museum in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  King had a disagreement with his employer over his rights to what he considered to be his private collection of fossils.  King studied anatomy and ran a bookshop, and despite not having a formal education became a prominent figure in the geological circles of his day.  William King was appointed to Chair of Mineralogy and Geology at the opening of Queen’s College Galway in 1849 at the age of forty. 

In 1856, workers at a German quarry in the Neander valley found bones in a cave.  It was William King who pointed out that the cave sediments, where the fossils were found, were at least 30,000 years old and in 1864 he argued that ’Neander man’ was not a modern human but another species entirely, a primitive human whom he called Homo neanderthalensis.  

When King came to Galway he brought with him part of his collection of rocks and fossils and established a geological museum at the Galway College (today called the James Mitchell Museum after a subsequent Professor of Geology). 

King discussed, with variable degrees of success, the economic geology of Ireland, the development of cleavage in Donegal, and the uplift of the Burren, and he acted as a consultant for the route of transatlantic cables.  His wide-ranging experience and knowledge also formed the basis for a top-quality undergraduate programme in the geological sciences.  Despite his considerable international reputation he remained a relatively anonymous figure in the vigorous and colourful Irish geological community of the nineteenth century.  King established a teaching curriculum that apparently included a wide range of contemporary developments in science and accumulated and maintained collections that have been beneficial to generations of students.  He participated in a number of high profile, international debates from one of the then most isolated and poorest parts of Europe. 

Sources:

David A.T. Harper on the Geological Sciences, From Queen’s College to National University, Tadhg Foley (ed), Four Courts Press, Dublin 1999.

Mary Mulvihill, Ingenious Ireland: A county-by-county exploration of Irish mysteries and marvels, Townhouse Publishers, Dublin 2002.

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