William Graham Henderson Maxwell


William Graham Henderson Maxwell was an Australian geologist and academic who did extensive research on the Great Barrier Reef.

Early life

William Graham Henderson Maxwell was born in Atherton, Queensland in 1929. He attended Gordonvale State School and Thornburgh College in Charters Towers.
He enrolled in the University of Queensland and took his B.Sc. with Honours degree in 1950. He was awarded a CSIRO scholarship to continue his studies. Maxwell was the first person to be awarded a PhD at the University of Queensland, in 1952, under the supervision of Dorothy Hill.
He was awarded the Beit Fellowship for Scientific Research to Imperial College London in 1952.

Career

In the mid 1950s, Maxwell worked as a geologist for Shell in Trinidad. He also lectured at the University of Queensland from 1960-1962 and helped to identify the Yarrol Basin in 1964. He was Associate Professor and later Professor in Geology at the University of Sydney from 1962-1972, retiring in 1972. Maxwell was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin in 1964.
Maxwell and his team of students at the University of Sydney, mapped the surface sediments of the whole of the Great Barrier Reef province for the book, Atlas of the Great Barrier Reef. They used aerial photography to conduct their geomorphological work.
From 1965, some of Maxwell's research was supported by the American Petroleum Institute and the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society.
In 1970, Maxwell gave evidence to the Commonwealth Crown of Thorns Starfish Committee of Inquiry.
He took his D.Sc. from the University of Queensland in 1970.
Maxwell died in Queensland in 1999.

Publications

Maxwell was made life member of Queensland Paleontological Society in 1963.