Philip Lake

Philip Lake (9 April 1865, Morpeth, Northumberland – 12 June 1949, Cambridge, England) was a British geologist and palaeontologist.

Education After graduating from Morpeth Grammar School (where his father was the headmaster), Philip Lake studied from 1881 to 1884 at the Durham College of Science, where he learned geology from G. A. L. Lebour. In 1884 Lake matriculated at St John's College, Cambridge. There he graduated with a B.A. in 1887. and he resigned from the Geology Survey due to ill health. From 1890 to 1892 he studied at the University of Cambridge, where he graduated with an M.A. on hill slopes, on mountain and island arcs, and on Wegener's theory of continental drift. Lake published papers on the genus Acidaspis (1896), as well as on trilobites from Bolivia (1906) and from the Bokkeveld Beds of South Africa (1904). His main palaeontological work was a monograph of British Cambrian trilobites published in several parts by the Palaeontographical Society from 1906 to 1946. In connexion with this important monograph, Lake developed a method of photography which eliminated much of the distortion of the trilobite fossils and showed their original form.

Emanuel Kayser's 1891 Lehrbuch der geologischen Formationskunde was translated and edited by Philip Lake and published in 1893 under the title Text-book of Comparative Geology. With Robert Heron Rastall (1871–1950), Lake wrote a Text-book of Geology (1910), of which five editions were published by 1941. Lake's 1915 book Physical Geography was an immediate success and remained a standard work for several decades. He also contributed articles on regional geology to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Lake served from 1904 to 1907 and from 1927 to 1928 on the Council of the Geological Society of London and was awarded in 1912 the society's Lyell Medal.

Selected publications Articles

(See Bala Series and Llandovery Epoch.) online text at archive.org

Books

(2nd edition, 1912) (4th edition 1927)