WOODWARD, JOHN (b. Derbyshire, England, 1 May 1665; d. London, England, 25 April 1728), geology, mineralogy, botany.

    in the organic origin of animal remains in rocks; and he translated the Essay into Latin. The information contained in the Essay and in Woodward's later works also contributed toward establishing that strata throughout the world are, generally speaking, similar in character, a conclusion necessary before any acceptable theory of the origin of the rocks of the crust of the earth could be formulated.

In 1696 Woodward published an anonymous twenty-page pamphlet entitled Brief Instructions for making Observations in All Parts of the World: as Also for Collecting, Preserving, and Sending Over Natural Things. This work is of considerable interest, for even today it might, with little emendation, serve the purpose for which it was intended. Woodward circulated the work, and by this means and through correspondents in many countries ultimately formed a large collection of fossils and minerals. The value of this collection lay in the fact that he studied his specimens carefully, and later published pioneer attempts to classify both minerals and fossils systematically.

Woodward first discussed minerals in Section 4 of his Essay, where he admitted the difficulties in determining the nature of individual minerals, inevitable at that time, and made greater because he included rocks with his minerals. His first attempt at a classification appeared in 1704, under the head “Fossils,” in John Harris' Lexicon chemicum. Here he divided minerals into six classes: “earths, stones, salts, bitumina, metallick minerals and metals.” This was reprinted with little change, in his Naturalis historia telluris (1714). Later Woodward greatly enlarged this classification. His Fossils of All Kinds Digested Into a Method (1728) contains a large folding table setting out his mineral classification systematically. It retains the six major classes, but adds many more subdivisions. The text includes fifty-six pages in which some two hundred minerals are described, together with their mode of occurrence in some cases. Some specimens were examined under the microscope, and Woodward mentions the characteristics used in making his determinations.

Woodward's last work, published posthumously in 1729, was An Attempt Towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England. This was a detailed catalogue of his collection of both British and foreign minerals and fossils, some 4,000 - 5,000 in number, occupying about 600 pages of small print. Localities of specimens are given with, frequently, the names of correspondents who supplied them, and the use of some minerals is discussed.

In this catalogue Woodward enlarged his systematic classification of minerals to include eleven classes. He also classified animal and vegetable fossils, the former into fifteen classes, and the latter into five groups. His classification of fossils was more elaborate and rational than that used by Lhwyd in his Lithophylacii Britannici ichnographia (1699). Woodward's catalogue was used by geologists for almost a century after its publication. The specimens he collected are now preserved in the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge, in their original cases.

Woodward's last contribution to the advancement of geological science was to leave in his will funds to establish at the University of Cambridge a lectureship bearing his name; this eventually evolved into the Woodwardian chair in geology, the earliest such post in the subject in any British university.

Woodward was the first British author to publish a systematic classification and description of minerals based on his own observations; and he emphasized the importance to his country of its mineral wealth. His classification of fossil organic remains was one of the earliest of its kind. While Woodward does not rank high as an original thinker, his contributions to the advancement of geology were important in their time, in relation to contemporary knowledge. The true value of his work can only be assessed by examining all of his geological publications. His works were widely read and must have done much to stimulate interest in the earth sciences.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. ORIGINAL WORKS.

For a complete and annotated bibliography of Woodward's works, including translations, see V. A. Eyles, “John Woodward, F.R.S., F.R.C.P., M.D. (1665 - 1728): A Bio-bibliographical Account of His Life and Work,” in Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, 5 (1971), 399 - 427.

Woodward's books of geological and mineralogical interest are Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth (London, 1695; 2nd ed.; 1702; 3rd ed., 1723); Brief Instructions for Making Observations in All Parts of the World (London, 1696; repr. with an introduction by V. A. Eyles, by the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, London, 1973); Naturalis historia telluris illustrata & aucta (London, 1714); Natural History of the Earth, Illustrated, Enlarged and Defended (London, 1726), a translation by B. Holloway, of Naturalis historia, with some other papers by Woodward; A Supplement and Continuation of the Essay Towards a