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1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Boase, Henry Samuel

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10445911911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 4 — Boase, Henry Samuel

BOASE, HENRY SAMUEL (1799–1883), English geologist, the eldest son of Henry Boase (1763–1827), banker, of Madron, Cornwall, was born in London on the 2nd of September 1799. Educated partly at Tiverton grammar-school, and partly at Dublin, where he studied chemistry, he afterwards proceeded to Edinburgh and took the degree of M.D. in 1821. He then settled for some years as a medical practitioner at Penzance; there geology engaged his particular attention, and he became secretary of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall. The results of his observations were embodied in his Treatise on Primary Geology (1834), a work of considerable merit in regard to the older crystalline and igneous rocks and the subject of mineral veins. In 1837 he removed to London, where he remained for about a year, being elected F.R.S. In 1838 he became partner in a firm of bleachers at Dundee. He retired in 1871, and died on the 5th of May 1883.