Geoscience Reference
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William. Probablymuch of his later geological success was owed to his
uncle's influence; this was none other than William Smith, the
so-called 'Father of English Geology' whose stratigraphical laws and
mapping didmuch to regularise the vast lithological record (Phillips, it
will be remembered, made his own stratigraphical contribution when
he coined the stratigraphical terms 'Mesozoic' and 'Kainozoic' in
1840). From1815 Phillips trained as a surveyor and assisted his uncle's
various geological enterprises. Unfortunately Smith lost his London
base when he was imprisoned for bankruptcy and following his release
he and his nephew headed northwards to Yorkshire where they eked
out a peripatetic existence. In 1825 Phillips was appointed Keeper of
the Yorkshire Philosophical Association's museum and his geological
career began in earnest. He too, like his uncle, produced a large-scale
geological map, but expanded the coverage to include the whole of the
British Isles, and later adjacent areas of France. The first edition
appeared in about 1837 with the eleventh and final addition twenty-
five years later in 1862. Unlike his uncle, Phillips worked for the
Geological Survey and had hoped to be appointed Local Director for
Ireland, a position he had aspirations to hold concurrently with his
Dublin chair, but (probably through geological infighting) this avenue
was closed to him and he returned to England.
Phillips was closely associated with the British Association for
the Advancement of Science and was instrumental in the early organ-
isation of its important meetings, which migrated from city to city on
an annual basis. He was to act as the Assistant Secretary to this
organisation for over thirty years. The inaugural session was held in
1831 in York where Phillips was working at the time. During his
residency in York, Phillips also produced a classic account of the
geology of the region in two volumes. Subsequently his geological
collection on which he based some of his findings given in these
volumes ended up in the collections of William Gilbertson and a
number of these, including the type of the important bryozoan
Fistulipora, are now in the Natural History Museum, London. He
was appointed a deputy reader in geology at Oxford in 1853, reader in
