John-Clay Purves MD (30 January 1825–26 July 1903) was a British geologist and museum curator.
[1] He had spent a couple of years working for the Geological Survey in Scotland before joining the Yorkshire Museum in 1878.
He was initially employed as a temporary assistant to the museum before being made permanent Keeper following the death of the sub-curator Henry Baines.
[3] He resigned this post in 1880 following his appointment to the Geological Survey of Belgium.
In his subsequent geological career he is attributed with naming the Namurian; a stage in the regional stratigraphy of northwest Europe with an age between roughly 326 and 313 Ma (million years ago).