RALPH

See also:

• TATE, JAMES (1771-1843)
• TATE, NAHUM (1652-1715)
• RALPH TATE (1840-1901)
• TATE, SIR HENRY, BART

TATE (1840-1901)  , British geologist, was born at Alnwick in Northumberland in 184o . He was a nephew of George Tate (18o5-1871), naturalist and archaeologist, an active member of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club . He was educated at the Cheltenham Training College and at the Royal School of Mines, and in 1861 he was appointed teacher of natural science at the Philosophical Institution in Belfast . He there studied botany, and published his Flora Belfastinesis (1863); and he also investigated the Cretaceous and Liassic rocks of Antrim, II bnitging his results before the Geological Society of London . In 1864 he was appointed assistant in the museum of that society . In 1867 he went on an exploring expedition to Nicaragua and Venezuela . In 1871 he was appointed to the mining school established by the Cleveland ironmasters first at Darlington and then at Redcar . Here he made a special study of the Lias and its fossils, in conjunction with the Rev . J . F . Blake, and the results were published in an important work, The Yorkshire Lias (1876), in which the life-history of the strata was first worked out in detail . In 1875 Tate was appointed professor of natural science in the university of Adelaide, South Australia .

He now gave especial

attention to the recent and tertiary mollusca of Australia . He was the chief founder of the Royal Society of South Australia, and was in 1893 president of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science . He died at Adelaide on the 20th of September 1901 .