Archibald Lamont

Doctor Archibald "Archie" Lamont (21 October 1907 – 16 March 1985) was a Scottish geologist, palaeontologist, Scottish Nationalist writer, poet and politician. He named the trilobite genus Wallacia after William Wallace.

Academic career He began his academic career as assistant lecturer in 1936 and during the same year married Rose Bannatyne Mackinlay with whom he fathered a son they named Patrick John Coll Lamont. In 1944 he became lecturer in geology at the University of Birmingham and was then appointed Carnegie Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh (1945–55).

Lamont was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 6 March 1950, upon the proposal of Sir Edward B Bailey, Arthur Holmes, John G C Anderson and Frederick William Anderson.

He was also a Fellow of the Geological Society of London, and a member of the Edinburgh Geological Society and the Geological Society of Glasgow. Lamont retired from teaching at the age of 38 to live in the small village of Carlops, situated in the Pentland Hills, south of Edinburgh. He died on 16 March 1985.

Taxonomic and paleontological work Lamont discovered and named several taxa. For instance, Wallacia Lamont 1978, a monophyletic group of late Llandovery trilobite, was named for the famed Scottish knight, Sir William Wallace. Wallacia is one of the earliest Wenlock encrinurine trilobites from the Baltic area, the British Isles, and Canada. Wallacia is regarded as sister taxon to Encrinurus sensu stricto and includes at least ten named species.

Lamont's discoveries have been criticized for creating a "taxonomic mess", by describing genera based on "the basis of miserable scraps". He also published articles in his own Scottish Journal of Science, which is frowned upon in science as it has led to taxonomic vandalism.