John Gwyn Jeffreys

John Gwyn Jeffreys FRS (18 January 1809 – 21 January 1885) was a British conchologist and malacologist.

John Gwyn Jeffreys was born in Britain on 18 January 1809, at Swansea, Wales. He was the eldest son of J. Jeffreys of Fynone, Glamorgan. Jeffreys was educated in Swansea at the Bishop Gore School (Swansea Grammar School). From the age of seventeen, he was an apprentice to one of the principal solicitors of Swansea, before going to London, where he qualified as a barrister in 1838.

Jeffreys worked as a solicitor in Swansea until 1856, when he was called to the bar in London. But his greater passion was for conchology. He was not satisfied simply to form a collection, but was interested in all aspects of the biology of molluscs.

In 1840 on 2 April he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. On june 21 of the same year he married Ann Nevill at Llangennech. They would have a son and four daughters; and were the grandparents of the physicist, Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley.

In 1866 Jeffreys retired from the law, and continued a series of dredging operations he started in 1861 aboard the yacht, Osprey, which he later purchased from his brother-in-law. Accompanied by other specialists in marine life such as Charles William Peach (1800-1886), the Reverend Alfred Merle Norman (1831-1918), George Barlee (1794-1861) and Edward Waller (1803-1873), he dredged the seas around the Shetland Islands, the west of Scotland, the English Channel and the Irish Sea. He also went on expeditions to Norway.

...
Wikipedia