William Lonsdale (9 September 1794 in Bath – 11 November 1871 in Bristol), English geologist and palaeontologist, won the Wollaston medal in 1846 for his research on the various kinds of fossil corals.
[3] The ability with which he edited the publications of the society and advised the council on every obscure and difficult point was commented on by Murchison in his presidential address (1843).
In 1837 he suggested from a study of the fossils of the South Devon limestones that they would prove to be of an age intermediate between the Carboniferous and Silurian systems.
[4] Lonsdale's paper, Notes on the Age of the Limestones of South Devonshire (read 1840), was published in the same volume of the Transactions of the Geological Society (ser.
v.) with Sedgwick and Murchison's famous paper On the Physical Structure of Devonshire, and these authors observe that the conclusion arrived at by Mr Lonsdale, we now apply without reserve both to the five groups of our North Devon section, and to the fossiliferous slates of Cornwall.