William King an Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...

 geologist at Queen's College Galway, was the first (in 1864) to propose that the bones found in Neanderthal, Germany

Neanderthal, Germany

The Neandertal is a small valley of the river Düssel in the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia, located about east of Düsseldorf, the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia. The valley belongs to the area of the towns Erkrath and Mettmann...

 in 1856 were not of human origin, but of a distinct species: Homo neanderthalensis

Neanderthal

The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...

. He proposed the name of this new species at a meeting of the British Association in 1863, with the written version published in 1864. He is commonly thought to have been a professor of anatomy, but never taught the subject.

King's grandson, also called William King, is a globe-circumnavigating yachtsman and was a Royal Navy officer in World War II.

External links

• William King. History of NUI Galway, the Science Faculty and associated scientists.
• James Mitchell Geology Museum. William King - Dept. of Earth & Ocean Sciences, NUI, Galway.