Lapworth, Charles 1842-1920
English geologist

Born in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, he undertook important work in elucidating the geology of the south of Scotland and the north-west Highlands. He was Professor of Geology at Birmingham (1881-1913) and wrote especially on graptolites, which he used to unravel the geological structure of the Southern Uplands of Scotland. He introduced the term Ordovician (1879), thereby ending a dispute involving the upper parts of Adam Sedgwick's Cambrian system and the lower parts of Sir Roderick Murchison's Silurian system, which Lapworth showed to be one and the same. His investigations in the north-west Highlands of Scotland helped resolve the controversy about the nature of the junction between the Cambrian and Ordovician sedimentary rocks and the overthrust Moinian. He published a memoir on southern Scotland in 1899 and his major Monograph of British Graptolites (1901-18).