1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Waagen, Wilhelm Heinrich

WAAGEN, WILHELM HEINRICH (1841–1900), German palaeontologist, was born at Munich on the 23rd of June 1841. He was educated at Munich and Zurich, and through the influence of A. Oppel he commenced to study the rocks and fossils of the Jurassic system, and published an essay in 1865, Versuch einer Allgemeinen Classification der Schichten des oberen Jura. In 1870 he joined the staff of the Geological Survey of India, and was appointed palaeontologist in 1874, but was obliged to retire through ill-health in 1875. He published important monographs in the Palaeontologia Indica on the palaeontology of Cutch (1873–1876) and the Salt Range (1879–1883), dealing in the last-named work with fossils from the Lower Cambrian to the Trias. In 1879 he was appointed professor of mineralogy and geology in the German technical high school at Prague, and he became a contributor to the continuation of Barrande's great work on the Système Silurien de Bohême. In 1890 he became professor of palaeontology at the university of Vienna, and in 1898 the Lyell medal was awarded to him by the Geological Society of London. He died in Vienna on the 24th of March 1900.