This article is about the Canadian natural scientist. For American Civil War veteran who received the Congressional Medal of Honor, see
William H. Mathews (soldier).
William Henry Mathews (1919–2003) was a
Canadiangeologist,
volcanologist,
engineer, and
professor. He is considered a pioneer in the study of
subglacial eruptions and volcano-ice interactions in North America. Many of his publications continue to be regarded as classics in their field.
Biography
Bill Mathews was born in
Vancouver,
British Columbia in 1919. His mother and a brother died when he was two; his father, Vancouver pioneer Thomas Mathews, died when he was 13.
Mathews attended
King George Secondary School before entering the
University of British Columbia in 1935, earning a Bachelor of Applied Science in geological engineering in 1940, followed by a Master of Applied Science with a major in
petrology and a minor in physics in 1941. During college, he served as a student assistant for the
Geological Survey of Canada from 1938 to 1941, and was also an instructor in the mountain infantry school of the
Alpine Club of Canada, training personnel for the Canadian armed forces. After graduation, he worked as a
mining engineer for the British Columbia Department of Mines from 1942 to 1946.
He then moved to the
University of California, Berkeley, completing his
Ph.D. in June 1948 with a dissertation titled Geology of the
Mount Garibaldi map-area, southwestern British Columbia. While at Berkeley he met and married his wife, Laura Lu Mathews, served on the Berkeley faculty as an
assistant professor from 1948 to 1951, and then returned to Canada to accept an
associate professorship in the Department of Geography and Geology at the University of British Columbia. He was promoted to full
professor in 1959, served as department chairman from 1964 to 1971, and continued teaching until his retirement to professor emeritus status in 1984.
Mathews received the
Willet G. Miller Medal for "outstanding research in any branch of the earth sciences" from the
Royal Society of Canada in 1989. After his retirement from teaching duties, he maintained an active research program and began writing a book on the geology of southern British Columbia, working part-time on the project until his death in 2003. The book was published posthumously in 2005 as Roadside Geology of Southern British Columbia.
Scientific research
Mathews scientific work embraced a broad spectrum of topics, including
volcanoes,
glaciers, regional
geomorphology,
landslides,
hydrogeology,
stratigraphy,
coal geology, and
mineral deposits. But his most influential work was in the fields of subglacial eruptions and volcano-ice interactions. He discovered several ideal field laboratories for this research in his home province of British Columbia, including the numerous volcanoes in
Garibaldi Provincial Park just north of Vancouver and the remote
Tuya Volcanic Field in far northern British Columbia. While still in graduate school at Berkeley in 1947, he published a paper, "Tuyas, Flat-Topped Volcanoes in Northern British Columbia", in which he coined the term "
tuya" to refer to the distinctive, flat-topped, steep-sided volcanoes formed when lava erupts through a thick glacier or
ice sheet. He took the name from
Tuya Butte, a near-ideal specimen of the type, and this name has since become standard worldwide among volcanologists in referring to and writing about these volcanic formations. Late in his career, other scientists named a previously unnamed tuya in the
Tuya Volcanic Field in honor of him as
Mathews Tuya.
Mathews published his first article, titled "Geology of the Garibaldi Lake area", in the Canadian Alpine Journal in 1938 when he was only 19 years old. He would go on to author more than 100 published scientific papers and reports over the next six decades. A large portion of this body of work is devoted to the numerous fascinating volcanic, glacial, and
limnological features of Garibaldi Provincial Park, which he examines, analyzes, and interprets in meticulous detail and with far-reaching insight.
Mathews, William H. (1975). Garibaldi Geology: A popular guide to the geology of the
Garibaldi Lake area. Geological Association of Canada.
Mathews, William Henry (1948). Geology of the Mount Garibaldi map-area, southwestern British Columbia. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley. pp. 229 pp.
Mathews, William Henry (1941). Geology of the Ironmask Batholith. Thesis (Master's)--University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC.
Selected significant articles
Mathews, W. H. (1938). "Geology of the Garibaldi Lake area [British Columbia]". Canadian Alpine Journal. 25: 107–112.