Person

Twelvetrees, William Harper (1848 - 1919)

Born
26 October 1848
Bedfordshire, United Kingdom
Died
7 November 1919
Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
Occupation
Geologist

Summary

William Twelvetrees was a geologist who, after completing his training in Germany, worked for 20 years in mines in Russia and Asia Minor before migrating to Tasmania in 1891. In 1899 he was appointed to the joint positions of Government Geologist and Chief Inspector of Mines for the Geological Survey of Tasmania. He expanded the role of the Survey from inspection of mines to the long-term systematic study of Tasmania's mineral fields. In addition he introduced a training program for junior geologists and established the Survey's collections of rocks, minerals and fossils. Twelvetrees's publications included over 170 reports on Tasmanian geology, and numerous articles in Russian and German scientific journals and the transactions of the Royal Society of Tasmania. The Tasmanian Branch of the Geological Society of Australia awards the W. H. Twelvetrees Medal to recognise significant contributions to the geology of Tasmania.

Skip to

Details

Chronology

1871 - 1880
Career position - Worked in copper mines in East Russia
1882 - 1890
Career position - Worked at Lidjessi silver-lead mines in Asia Minor
1891
Life event - Migrated to Australia (Tasmania)
1896 - 1899
Career position - Geological Surveyor, Department Mines Tasmania
1899 - 1914
Career position - Chief Inspector of Mines, Geological Survey of Tasmania
1899 - 1919
Career position - Government Geologist, Geological Survey of Tasmania
1904
Career position - President, Section C (Geology), Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science
1912
Award - Clarke Medal, Royal Society of New South Wales

Related Awards

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

  • Collins, David, Chemistry in 19th Australia - Select Bibliography, An exhibition of the Encyclopedia circa 2005 with assistance from Ailie Smith and Gavan McCarthy., eScholarship Research Centre (original publisher), Melbourne, 2009, https://eoas.info/exhibitions/ciab/ciab_ALL.html. Details

Journal Articles

  • Bacon, C. A., 'A brief history of the Department of Mines - 1882 to 1996', Tasmanian Geological Survey record, 7 (1-18) (1996). Details
  • Twelvetrees, W. H., 'The Middlesex and Mount Claude Mining Field', Geological Survey bulletin, Department of Mines Tasmania, 14 (1913), 1-5. Details
  • Twelvetrees, W.H.; and Petterd, W.F., 'On the occurrence of limurite in Tasmania', Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania (1897), 1-6. Details

Resources

See also

  • Johns, R.K. ed., History and role of government geological surveys in Australia (Adelaide: South Australian Government Printer, 1976), 111 pp. Details
  • McQueen, Ken, 'A challenging ore deposit geometry: history of the Mount Claude-Round Hill silver mine, northwest Tasmania', Journal of Australasian mining history, 20 (2022), 15-36. Details
  • Schulze, Peter, 'North Mount Lyell disaster - a miscarriage of justice', in 16th Engineering Heritage Australia Conference: Conserving Our Heritage - Make a Difference! (Barton, Australian Capital Territory: Engineers Australia, 2011), pp. 203-216., https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.895831287109964. Details
  • Serle, Percival, Dictionary of Australian biography (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1949). Details

Annette Alafaci and Helen Cohn

Created: 24 October 2006, Last modified: 16 February 2023

EOAS ID: biogs/P004836b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P004836b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260