title: Woodwardian Professor of Geology
text: # Woodwardian Professor of Geology
  
  The Woodwardian Professor of Geology is a professorship held in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge. It was founded by John Woodward in 1728 under the title of Professor of Fossils. Woodward's will left to the University a large collection of fossils and also dictated that the professor should be elected by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Ely, the President of the Royal Society, the President of the Royal College of Physicians, the Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, and the University Senate.
  
  ## Incumbents of the Woodwardian Professorship of Geology
  
  * Conyers Middleton, 1731
  * Charles Mason, 1734 (died 1770 and described on his tomb in Orwell church as "Woodwardian Professor of Fossils")
  * John Michell, 1762
  * Samuel Ogden, 1764
  * Thomas Green, 1778
  * John Hailstone, 1788
  * Adam Sedgwick, 1818
  * Thomas McKenny Hughes, 1873
  * John Edward Marr, 1917
  * Owen Thomas Jones, 1930
  * William Bernard Robinson King, 1943
  * Oliver Meredith Boone Bulman, 1955
  * Harry Blackmore Whittington, 1966-1983
  * Ian Nicholas McCave, 1985-2008
  * David A. Hodell, 2008-
  