Edward John Dunn was an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n geologist

Geologist

A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...

, winner of the 1905 Murchison Medal

Murchison Medal

An award established by Roderick Murchison, who died in 1871. One of the closing public acts of Murchison’s life was the founding of a chair of geology and mineralogy in the University of Edinburgh. Under his will there was established the Murchison Medal and geological fund to be awarded annually...

.

Early life

Dunn was born at Bedminster near Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, the son of Edward Herbert Dunn and his wife Betsy, née Robinson. The family emigrated to New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

 in 1849, initially living near Goulburn, New South Wales

Goulburn, New South Wales

Goulburn is a provincial city in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia in Goulburn Mulwaree Council Local Government Area. It is located south-west of Sydney on the Hume Highway and above sea-level. On Census night 2006, Goulburn had a population of 20,127 people...

 then in Beechworth, Victoria

Beechworth, Victoria

Beechworth is a well-preserved historical town located in the north-east of Victoria, Australia, famous for its major growth during the gold rush days of the mid-1850s...

 from 1856. Dunn was educated at the Beechworth Church of England school and later by a tutor. Dunn was a collector of rocks and minerals from boyhood.

Geological career

Dunn entered the Beechworth land survey office and had experience in surveying. In 1864 Dunn joined the geological survey under Alfred Richard Cecil Selwyn

Alfred Richard Cecil Selwyn

Alfred Richard Cecil Selwyn, CMG, LL.D, FRS, FGS was a British geologist, director of the Geological Survey of Victoria from 1852–1869, director of Geological Survey of Canada 1869–1894 and President of the Royal Society of Canada 1895-1896.-Early life:Selwyn was born in Kilmington, Somerset,...

 and was trained in geological work by Georg Heinrich Friedrich Ulrich. He remained with the survey until it was abolished in 1869 and in the same year qualified as a mining surveyor.

In 1871 Dunn returned to England, via South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, where he was government geologist for the Cape Colony

Cape Colony

The Cape Colony, part of modern South Africa, was established by the Dutch East India Company in 1652, with the founding of Cape Town. It was subsequently occupied by the British in 1795 when the Netherlands were occupied by revolutionary France, so that the French revolutionaries could not take...

 reporting on mines. He prepared the first geological map of South Africa and had a part in the discovery of dimonds. In 1872 Dunn travelled through Bushmanland accompanied by 15 troopers of the Northern Border police. He was able to gather much information about the Bushmen which he embodied in his work on The Bushman, which, however, was not published until nearly 60 years later. In 1873 he went to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, studied at the school of mines, Jermyn Street, and obtained his certificate for assaying. In 1883 he prophesied that the Transvaal

South African Republic

The South African Republic , often informally known as the Transvaal Republic, was an independent Boer-ruled country in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century. Not to be confused with the present-day Republic of South Africa, it occupied the area later known as the South African...

 would become an infinitely richer gold-bearing country than any yet discovered.

Dunn returned to Victoria

Victoria (Australia)

Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....

 in 1886 and went into private practice. As a result of one of his reports the coalfield at Korumburra, Victoria

Korumburra, Victoria

Korumburra is a town in the Australian state of Victoria. It is located on the South Gippsland Highway, kilometres south-east of Melbourne, in the South Gippsland Shire local government area....

, was developed. Dunn was appointed director of the geological survey of Victoria in 1904, and in 1905 was awarded the Murchison Medal by the Geological Society of London

Geological Society of London

The Geological Society of London is a learned society based in the United Kingdom with the aim of "investigating the mineral structure of the Earth"...

. Dunn applied the portion of the fund allotted to him with the medal towards the cost of publishing his monograph on Pebbles which appeared in 1911. Dunn was elected President of the Royal Society of Victoria

Royal Society of Victoria

The Royal Society of Victoria is the oldest learned society in the state of Victoria in Australia.The Royal Society of Victoria was formed in 1859 from a merger between The Philosophical Society of Victoria and The Victorian Institute for the Advancement of Science , both founded...

 in 1906. Dunn retired from the Geological Survey of Victoria in 1912, but kept up his interest in his subject through an energetic old age.

Late life

In 1929 at the age of 84, Dunn published a comprehensive work on the Geology of Gold; his book on The Bushman, based on his own experiences in South Africa, came out two years later. Dunn died on 20 April 1937. He married in 1875 Elizabeth Julie Perchard who survived him with a son and two daughters. A list of his publications can be found in In Memory of Edward John Dunn, Melbourne, 1937. His collection of Bushmen objects was given to the Pitt Rivers museum at Oxford, his australites and pebbles went to the British Museum, and his collection of Victorian stones to the mines department museum, Melbourne.