Abstract John Walter Gregory, always known as Jack in the family, was born into a ‘middle class’ family at 18 Gainsborough Road, Mile End (now demolished), in the east of London, on 27 January 1864. He was the middle child between Anne Jane (1862–1944), born 4 July 1862, and a younger sister Eleanor (1865–1956), born 6 December 1865. His father, John James Gregory (1828–1876) was a wool salesman who came from Burton in the Wirral, and his mother, Jane Gregory (1822–1894), née Lewis, was born in Raglan, Monmouthshire on 28 September 1822. Gregory was an intellectual, a polymath and workaholic geologist. His diverse interests and skills all stemmed from his love of geology and included exploration; he had an insatiable appetite for travel. He was also a geographer, geomorphologist, zoologist, archaeologist, anthropologist, political commentator, educationalist and teacher, as well as a journalist. In his early professional life in London he was a palaeontologist with the Natural History Museum. During an expedition to East Africa he coined the phrase ‘African Rift Valley’. His work took him to Spitzbergen, the Caribbean and elsewhere, before he obtained the Chair of Geology at the University of Melbourne in 1900 at the age of 36. There he focused on mining geology, and simultaneously put the Geological Survey of Victoria back on its feet as its Director. Gregory even flirted with past climates, although he was a proponent of constant past global climate. In 1904, he returned to the UK to the Chair of Geology at Glasgow

Abstract At the meeting of the University Court on 13 June 1929, Gregory intimated his intention to retire from the Chair of Geology on 30 September 1929 ( Glasgow Herald , 14 June), thus giving very short notice to appoint a successor without an interregnum. This suggests that he had made the decision only shortly before 13 June. The official retirement age for Professors in Glasgow was then 70; at 65, he was standing down five years early. He had visibly aged (Figs 21.1 & 21.2 compared with Frontispiece when c. 50). He did not intend to stop working, but planned to concentrate on writing, particularly books, undisturbed by the academic routines of teaching, field classes, attendance at Senate and other committees, and running the Department of Geology and the geological section of the Hunterian Museum. He still had part of his two year spell as President of the GSL and a second presidential address to deliver; both London-based duties. Since he produced no fewer than four books (two joint) and about 30 papers in 1930 and 1931 following his retirement, there is no doubt that he continued relentlessly in his work ethic. His publication output actually increased as other duties fell away. The topics were mostly, but not entirely, the familiar ones already described. It seems likely that the trigger that precipitated Gregoryâ∈™s early retirement was the fact that Audrey, at some time in the later 1920s had decided to move back to Little Baddow in Essex (Fig. 21.3).

Abstract The magnificent new and commodious building of the British Museum (Natural History) in Cromwell Road, South Kensington, (referred to here by its current name: Natural History Museum (NHM)) opened to the public in April 1881 with a staff of five in the Geology Department, including the Keeper, Dr Henry Woodward (1832–1921). Following the transfer of Robert Etheridge Junior (1846–1920) and the retirement of William Davies (1813–1891), there was a competition in 1887, involving an examination, for the two vacant Assistantships. This competition resulted in the appointments of Francis Arthur Bather (1863–1934), a First Class Honours graduate in natural sciences from Oxford, and J. W. Gregory ( Lang 1934 ), despite the fact that the latter had not yet graduated or even taken his intermediate BSc examination, and needed to continue his part-time studies for several years to graduate. Clearly Gregory's performance, reputation, enthusiasm and promise gained him the post, and with Bather, he joined the three existing assistants, Richard Bullen Newton (1867–1949), George Charles Crick (1856–1917) and Arthur Smith Woodward ( Lang 1934 ). He accepted the post of 2nd Class Assistant on 16 August 1887 and started work on 12 September 1887 with a salary of £130 per year (NHM archives). It was a stunning coup to have obtained such a post in competition with Oxbridge graduates and the family were rightly proud of his success. Even 60 years later, his sister Eleanor recounted this achievement with pride (A. Mendell, pers. comm. 2008). Grenville Cole wrote to Gregory on 9 August 1887 ‘

Abstract First a summary and overview of the main activities Gregory undertook in the first five years after arriving in Glasgow is given with minimal references, and then follow, with full references, a detailed examination of his different society and research activities. Without the latter it is hard to appreciate the wide extent of his interests and the intensity of his dedication and productivity.

Abstract Gregory arrived in Melbourne, without his family, and was welcomed by the Professorial Board on 23 February 1900. He probably stayed initially with the Professor of Biology, Walter Baldwin Spencer (1860–1929), an enthusiast for fieldwork, who had written to him offering the use of his house as his wife and children were away (letter with A. Mendell). He must have made a favourable impression amongst the academic community because he was awarded a Melbourne University DSc almost immediately by ‘ ad eundem gradum ’ (Univ. Melb. Archives). This was not an honorary degree but recognition that he had achieved the same degree in another university of repute, in this instance, London. Of course, since his 1893 London DSc, he had published more than enough to gain another DSc if he had chosen to apply. According to Lim (1975) , his duties were to devote the whole of his time to the work of his department; to conduct and mark examinations and to deliver two courses of lectures of three hours a week each and associated fieldwork instruction. According to the newspaper The Age of 26 February 1900, Gregory's predecessor at Melbourne (who had come from a Chair at Queen's University, Belfast to the Chair in 1854, initially taught almost all the science in the university), ‘the late Sir Frederick McCoy never took his students into the field at all so they had no such practical work or contact with mining in the colony whereas Dr Gregory intends to promote field work, mineralogy,

Abstract The University of Glasgow archives contain a printed application, dated 17 May 1904, by Professor John Walter Gregory, DSc, FRS, FGS for the new Chair of Geology in the University of Glasgow which was submitted on his behalf by his sister Anne J. Nicholson, acting as attorney for Gregory, and Arthur Smith Woodward (Hon. LL D Glasgow, FRS & Keeper in the Geology Department of the NHM; Fig. 14.1 ), as authorized by cablegram from Gregory himself. Once again his elder sister, who was close to him throughout his life, helped him as did Woodward. His application listed his experience and achievements chronologically of which only a few items are repeated here. ‘Obtained first place in Honours for Geology in BSc 1891, University of London … 1887–1900 extremely varied experience in Palaeontology in BM(NH) … 1900 succeeded the late Sir Frederick McCoy as Professor of Geology in the University of Melbourne and since 1901 has also held office as Director of the Geological Survey of Victoria … 1900 Selected as Director of the Civilian Staff of the British Antarctic Expedition but did not accept the office … has visited nearly all the principal Universities and Geological Museums in Europe and North America and is well acquainted with the nature of the work in progress … 1892 Awarded the 1892 Lyell Fund, Sir A. Geikie addressed him “You have shown yourself to be at once an accomplished palaeontologist and an able petrographer”; 1894 Cuthbert Peek Award from Royal Geographic Society

Abstract According to C. J. Gregory (1977) , Gregory had made two unsuccessful attempts to visit parts of South America, and each time Gregory said ‘an international disaster had stopped him, so he had better not arrange a visit a third time lest some cataclysm took place’, which it did, but of a personal nature. One of his reasons for retiring early was that it freed him to depart during the austral summer, but it was not until 1932 that he was able to organize a party to explore part of Peru. The intention was to make a reconnaissance of the main Andean range and determine the age of the rocks, especially the time when they were exhumed from the Pacific, to examine the structure of parts of the Peruvian coast, the geology of the desert belt between the coast and the western front of the Andes, to visit Inca ruins and to return by one of the headwaters of the Amazon and the Amazon through Brazil to a seaport on the Amazon. However, from surviving correspondence (in the author's possession) with one of Gregory's old students, William Quarrier Kennedy (1903–1979), it is clear Gregory was also hoping to bring some samples of the Andean volcanic rocks, probably typical andesites, for Kennedy who was working on establishing the primary igneous magmas. This was an arduous undertaking for a man of 68 years, whose last previous expedition had been nine years earlier.