After service in the Great War, Lawrence John Chubb (1887–1971) entered University College London at the late age of 31 and remained there, as a student and, subsequently, staff member for 30 years. At this time Chubb's research interests were British Paleozoic stratigraphy and the geology of the Pacific islands. He retired in 1950 and joined the new Geological Survey Department of Jamaica as a geologist, later becoming deputy director (1957) and acting director (1961–1963). Chubb developed a new research program on the Cretaceous of Jamaica and the tropical Americas, with specialist expertise in the systematics of the rudist bivalves. He also founded and led the Jamaica Group of the Geologists' Association in 1955, which became the Geological Society of Jamaica in 1960; he was the first president of both organizations. He was the first historian of the geology of Jamaica, and wrote accessible biographies of De la Beche, Barrett, and Zans, the latter co-authored with John Williams, all of which are reproduced in the present volume.