Henry Francis Blanford

Who was Henry Francis Blanford?

Henry Francis Blanford was a British meteorologist and paleontologist who worked in India. He was a younger brother of the naturalist William Thomas Blanford, both of whom joined the Geological Survey of India in 1855. Henry was the first official meteorologist in India, appointed as Imperial Meteorological Reporter in 1875.

Henry was born at 27 Bouverie street, Whitefriars, London where his father ran a workshop for gilt mouldings. His early schooling was at Brighton and Brussels. For a while he studied design at Somerset House and Marlborough House before joining the Royal School of Mines, South Kensington in 1851 and studied under Henry De la Beche, Warington Wilkinson Smyth and John Percy. He was the recipient of a scholarship from the Duke of Cornwall. He then studied for a year at the Bergakademie, Mining Academy of Freiburg.

Henry and his brother William joined the Geological Survey of India in 1855 and his first work was to study the coal deposits of Talcher, Orissa. At Talcher he found evidence for the effect of ice in the formation of a boulder bed. From 1856 he was a curator of the Museum of Geology at Calcutta.