William Noel Benson FRS FRGS (26 December 1885 – 20 August 1957) was an English-born research geologist and academic active first in Australia and then New Zealand.

After winning an 1851 Exhibition Science Scholarship in 1910 he left Sydney to study at the University of Cambridge, where he worked until 1913.

His first paper, on the contact aureola of a granitic body, was published before he even finished his degree, and after graduating in 1907 with First Class Honours he temporarily worked as a lecturer at the University of Adelaide.

After winning an 1851 Exhibition Science Scholarship in 1910 he left Sydney in 1911 to work at the University of Cambridge, where he worked with John Edward Marr, Alfred Harker and Thomas George Bonney at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences.

[1][2] In 1913 he was granted the BA (Research) degree by Cambridge and left, spending most of the year travelling Europe with his parents and sisters.