Alfred Harker FRS (19 February 1859 - 28 July 1939) was an English geologist who specialised in petrology and interpretive petrography. He worked for the Geological Survey of Scotland and conducted extensive surveying and geological studies of western Scotland and the Isle of Skye. He and other British geologists pioneered the use of thin sections and the petrographic microscope in interpretive petrology.
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Harker's father was the Yorkshire corn merchant Portas Hewart Harker, his mother Ellen Mary Harker. He attended Hull and East Riding College, and the private Clewar House School (Windsor) before enrolling as an undergraduate at St. John's College (Cambridge) from where he graduated with an M.A. in 18 January 1882.[1] In 1884 he held the post of Demonstrator in the Geology Department under Thomas McKenny Hughes (whom he regarded his mentor), as Lecturer at Newnham College in 1892 at St. Johns College, as University Lecturer in 1904, and as Reader in Petrology in 1918.
In 1907, he was awarded the society's Murchison Medal, in 1922 he was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London, to which he had served as president from 1916-1918, and in 1935 the Royal Medal of the Royal Society (Fellow since 1902). The University of Edinburgh awarded him with an honorary doctoral degree in law in 1919. Harker Glacier on South Georgia Island[2], Mount Harker in Antarctica[2], and Dorsa Harker[3], a feature on the Moon, are named after him. The mineral harkerite, first found on the Isle of Skye, is named after him. After his retirement, he was given the post of honorary curator of the Cambridge Petrological Museum, and their extensive rock collection bears his name.
   | "Moon: Dorsa Harker" - USGS Astro: Planetary Nomenclature: Feature Data Search Results |
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