Item 0009 - Letter, 6 December 1870

Harry Govier Seeley was born on February 18, 1839, in London, England.

He was a British paleontologist and author. He studied English and mathematics in the late 1850s at the Working Men's College and became secretary to the college's museum. He supported himself by copying documents in the library of the British Museum, where Samuel P. Woodward encouraged him to study geology. In 1859, Seeley entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and was hired as an assistant in the Woodwardian Museum, where he lectured and catalogued fossils. In 1876, he became Professor of Geology and Geography at King's College, Cambridge; Bedford College, London and Queen's College, Cambridge, where he was appointed Dean in 1881. In 1891, he also became Lecturer on Geology and Mineralogy at the Royal Indian Engineering College, Cooper Hill, and held the office until 1906. Seeley published several papers, two catalogues of pterodactyl fossils, and the book on pterosaurs, Dragons of the Air (1901). He was a Fellow of the Linnean, Geological, Zoological, and Royal Geographical Societies and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1879. He was awarded the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society in 1885. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Philadelphia Academy (1878), the Imperial Geological Institute of Vienna (1880), and the Imperial Academy of Sciences of Moscow (1895). He was also a member of the Athenaeum Club.

In 1872, he married Eleanora Jane Mitchell (1845–1925). He died on January 8, 1909, in London, England.