John Phillips (geologist)

John Phillips FRS (25 December 1800 – 24 April 1874) was an English geologist. In 1841 he published the first global geologic time scale based on the correlation of fossils in rock strata, thereby helping to standardize terminology including the term Mesozoic, which he invented.

Philips was born at Marden in Wiltshire. His father belonged to an old Welsh family, but settled in England as an officer of excise and married the sister of William 'Strata' Smith, known as the "Father of English Geology". When both parents died when he was a child, Phillips came under Smith's charge and moved into his London home in early 1815. Over the next few years he attended various schools and helped his uncle with his geological research and writing; he also developed in interest in lithography (printing from prepared slabs of stone), and was among the earliest English practitioners of the process, experimenting with it between around 1816 and 1819. After leaving school, Phillips accompanied Smith on his wanderings in connection with his preparation of geological maps. In the spring of 1824 Smith went to York to deliver a course of lectures on geology, and his nephew Phillips accompanied him. Phillips accepted engagements in the principal Yorkshire towns to arrange their museums and give courses of lectures on the collections contained therein. York became his residence, and he obtained in 1826 the situation of keeper of the Yorkshire museum and secretary of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society at the same time as Henry Robinson was Librarian of the YPS.

From that centre Phillips extended his operations to towns beyond the county, and by 1831 he included University College London within the sphere of his activity. In that year the British Association for the Advancement of Science was founded at York, and Phillips was one of the active minds who organized its machinery. He became the first assistant secretary in 1832, a post which he held until 1859. In 1834 he accepted the professorship of geology at King's College London, but retained his post at York.

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