W.B.R. King – the Cambridge geologist who went to war

William Bernard Robinson King was awarded the Military Cross for bravery with the British Expeditionary Force before being evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940. He was a Cambridge graduate and World War I veteran who pioneered the use of geological expertise in the theatre of war. King went on to become the 11th Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge in 1944.

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Life in Ice Age Cambridgeshire – a new exhibit in the Sedgwick Museum

Excavating the Barrington Hippo in July 1910, © The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences

Hippos from Barrington, woolly mammoths from Barnwell and beavers from Burwell Fen help tell the remarkable story of Late Ice Age Cambridgeshire. A new ‘Ice Age’ exhibit in the Sedgwick Museum displays spectacular fossil finds from local villages that show how life, climate and the environment of the region have changed dramatically over the last 125,000 years.

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Thomas McKenny Hughes: one hundred years on

A hundred years ago Thomas McKenny Hughes (1832-1917) died. He was Adam Sedgwick’s successor as eighth Woodwardian Professor and his biographer. Today, although few geologists, even in Cambridge, will have heard of McKenny Hughes, he made his mark on British geology. It was McKenny Hughes who managed the planning and building of the Sedgwick Museum and he fostered the training of successive generations of geologists who in turn helped develop geology as we know it today.

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