Sir Tannatt William Edgeworth David KBE CMG DSO FRS (28 January 1858 – 28 August 1934) was a Welsh Australian geologist and Antarctic explorer.

He also served with distinction in World War I. David was born on 28 January 1858, in St Fagans near Cardiff, Wales, the eldest son of the Rev.

William David, a fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, a classical scholar and naturalist and his wife Margaret Harriette (née Thomson).

On 30 July 1885 he married Caroline (Cara) Mallett, principal of the Hurlstone Training College for Teachers, who had travelled to Australia in the same vessel with him.

Much of his time during the next four years was spent near Maitland where he was still tracing and mapping the coal measures and reporting to the government on other matters of commercial value.

David was not only a good scientist but very cultured, with a sense of humour, great enthusiasm, sympathy, and courtesy, and he quickly fitted into his new position.

In 1892 he was president of the geological section of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science at the Hobart meeting, and held the same position at Brisbane in 1895.

[1] The results provided support for Charles Darwin's theory of subsidence, and the expeditions made David's name as a geologist.

He attended the International Geological Congress held in Mexico in 1906; on his way back to Australia visiting the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and studying the effect of the San Francisco earthquake.

They still faced a 700-kilometre (430 mi) return journey and established a depot to enable them to transfer their load to one overladen sled and to remove the need to relay.

That day the party reached the coast line with perfect timing; within 24 hours they were collected by the Nimrod for the return trip to Cape Royds.

When David returned to Sydney he was presented with the Mueller medal by the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science at a rapturous official welcome.

At Shackleton's request, David then went on a lecture tour and earned enough money to pay the expenses of publication of the two volumes on the geology of the expedition.

[4][5] In 1913, David was elected president of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science for the second time and in 1926, was presented with the Royal Geographical Society's Patron's Medal.

[7] In August 1915, after reading reports about mining operations and tunnelling during the Gallipoli Campaign, along with Professor Ernest Skeats, a professor at the University of Melbourne, David wrote a proposal to Senator George Pearce, the Australian Defence Minister, suggesting that the government raise a military force to undertake mining and tunnelling.

[8] After the proposal was accepted, David used his advocacy and organisational abilities to set up the Australian Mining Corps, and on 25 October 1915 he was appointed as a major, at the age of 57.

He was invalided to London but returned to the Front in November, assuming the role of geological technical advisor to the British Expeditionary Force.

[17] In 1896 the Davids bought 26 acres (10.5 hectares) at Woodford, in the Blue Mountains, with an existing weatherboard cottage, two-roomed with two skillion rooms at the back.

David's The Geology of the Commonwealth of Australia was finally completed by his chosen collaborator, Associate Professor William R. Browne in 1950.

It is awarded by the Royal Society of New South Wales for distinguished contributions by a young scientist under the age of thirty-five for work done mainly in Australia or its territories.

The Edgeworth David Building at Tighes Hill TAFE campus in the New South Wales Hunter Valley is named in his honour.

[20] Edgeworth David's daughter Margaret McIntyre was the first woman elected to the Parliament of Tasmania and was awarded the Order of the British Empire.