Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Weaver, Thomas (1773-1855)
WEAVER, THOMAS (1773–1855), geologist, born in 1773, studied geology and mineralogy from 1790 to 1794 under Abraham Werner at Freiberg. Soon after his return to England he was entrusted by government with the investigation of the gold deposits in Wicklow, in reference to which he published in 1819 his ‘Memoir on the Geological Relations of the East of Ireland’ (London, 4to). In the early days of the Geological Society he became one of its active members, and published in the second series of its ‘Transactions’ (vols. i. and iv.) memoirs on the geology of Gloucestershire and Somerset and the south of Ireland. In the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ of the Royal Society for 1825 he asserted the relatively modern age of the fossil remains of the great Irish deer (Cervus megaceros), and in the following year he was elected a fellow of the society. He subsequently travelled as a mining geologist in Mexico and the United States, and in 1831 began a series of papers on the carboniferous rocks of America. Weaver had retired from his profession for some years before his death, which took place at his home in Pimlico, 2 July 1855.
In the Royal Society's catalogue (vi. 285–6) he is credited with twenty papers, bearing dates between 1820 and 1841, all of which are geological, and eight refer to Ireland. They were contributed chiefly to Thomson's ‘Annals of Philosophy,’ the ‘Philosophical Magazine,’ the ‘Annals of Natural History,’ and the ‘Transactions and Proceedings of the Geological Society.’
[Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. xii. pp. xxxviii–ix; Michaud's Biographie Universelle, vol. xliv.]