This year Dr Cherry Lewis, HoGG committee member, will give the Geological Society’s Founders’ Day Lecture. Hogg members can attend the lecture free of charge. Her talk entitled James Parkinson and the Founding of the Geological Society will be held at The Geological Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly on Wednesday 13 November, 2013.

17.30         Tea & coffee
18.00         Lecture by Dr Cherry Lewis, University of Bristol

Since numbers are limited, please e-mail Naomi Newbold if you wish to attend: naomi.newbold@geolsoc.org.uk

The annual Founder’s Day Lecture and Dinner commemorates the Society’s inauguration on Friday 13 November 1807, by thirteen gentlemen who sat down to dine at the Freemasons’ Tavern, Covent Garden.

For dinner tickets and full details please visit the Geological Society’s website.

James Parkinson and the Founding of the Geological Society

At the age of 16, James Parkinson (1755-1824) was apprenticed to his father to learn the ‘art and mystery’ of being an apothecary. Living all his life in Hoxton, then a village on the outskirts of London, his pioneering work in medicine led to him identifying the Shaking Palsy as a distinct medical condition, which eventually became known as Parkinson’s disease.  His favourite past time, however, was collecting fossils. This talk will review Parkinson’s remarkable life, including his involvement in a plot to kill King George III, how he put the study of fossils on the scientific map of Britain through his three volume work Organic Remains of a Former World, and how his expertise as the country’s only ‘fossilist’ led to him becoming one of the 13 founders of the Geological Society.