Finlay Lorimer Kitchin

Finlay Lorimer Kitchin FGS, FRS (3 December 1870, Whitehaven, Cumbria, UK – 20 January 1934, London) was a British geologist and palaeontologist.[1]

Kitchin was educated at St. Bees School and then at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he received his B.A. in 1893, M.A. in 1898, and Sc.D. in 1924.[2] At Cambridge he studied geology and palaeontology from 1890 to 1894 and then went to the University of Munich, where he studied paleontology under Karl Alfred von Zittel and received a doctoral degree (Promotion) in 1897. His doctoral dissertation is a study of Jurassic fossils discovered in the Cutch State and sent for examination by the Geological Survey of India.[3] After returning to England, he worked unofficially for a short time in the British Museum of Natural History.[4] He worked for the British Geological Survey from 1890 to 1905 as assistant palaeontologist and from 1905 to 1934 as palaeontologist.[2] He was promoted in 1905 as the successor of E. T. Newton upon the latter's retirement.[3]

Kitchin was elected in 1894 a Fellow of the Geographical Society and in 1929 a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was awarded the Lyell Medal shortly before his death in 1934.[3]

He was an accomplished musician and an authority on the construction of pipe-organs, as well as an authority on developments in locomotive design.[2]