Percy George Hamnall Boswell

Percy George Hamnall Boswell (7 August 1886 – 22 December 1960) was a British geologist.

Biography Boswell was born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, the son of printer George James Boswell of Ipswich and Mary Elizabeth (née) Marshall) of Tasmania.

He developed an early interest in geology while at school in Ipswich through fossil collecting and visiting local museums. As a teen he founded the Ipswich and District Field Club, which led to his election to as a fellow of the Geological Society of London in 1907. However, possibly as a result of his explorations, he developed choroiditis in both his eyes at 18 and nearly went blind; he never fully regained sight in his right eye.

Boswell was invested as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1918 Birthday Honours for his work during the Great War, as Geological Adviser to the Ministry of Munitions. During the war, he investigated British supplies of moulding sands for use in metal foundries and ultimately became "a recognized authority as a sedimentary petrologist." and was president of the Geological Society of London from 1940 to 1941. In 1934, he visited Africa to validate Louis Leakey's claim that he had found fossil remains of Homo sapiens more than 100,000 years old and publicly disagreed with Leakey's conclusions.

He died in Ruthin, Wales, in 1960.