English geologist and politician (1823–1911)
Mervyn Herbert Nevil Story Maskelyne (3 September 1823 – 20 May 1911) was an English geologist and politician.
Scientific career.
Educated at Wadham College, Oxford, Maskelyne taught mineralogy and chemistry at Oxford from 1851, before becoming a professor of mineralogy, 1856–95. He was Keeper of Minerals at the British Museum from 1857 to 1880. He was made an honorary Fellow of Wadham in 1873.
Maskelyne was also a pioneer of photography and an associate of Fox Talbot.
The meteoritic mineral "maskelynite" was named after him.
Family.
Mervyn was the eldest son of Antony Mervin Reeve Story and Margaret Maskelyne, the daughter of the Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne. The family adopted the name of Maskelyne on Nevil's coming of age as they had inherited that family's estate at Basset Down in Wiltshire.
Mervyn married Thereza Mary Dillwyn-Llewelyn (1834 – 21 February 1926) - Welsh astronomer and pioneer in scientific photography - on 29 June 1858.
Their daughter Mary married writer and politician Hugh Oakeley Arnold-Forster on 29 July 1885, and Hugh and Mary's granddaughter Vanda Morton published Nevil's biography in 1987 (see references). Their daughter Thereza was an advocate for domestic science who married physicist Arthur William Rucker in 1892.
Political career.
He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Cricklade as a Liberal, 1880–1886, and as Liberal Unionist, 1886–1892, and a member of Wiltshire County Council, 1889–1904.
References.
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