Canon Alfred Merle Norman, F.R.S

Abstract

IT has often been remarked that the study of science in this country has been notably advanced by the efforts of those who have never been professionally engaged in it. Canon Norman, who died on October 26, belonged to the best type of this class of scientific worker. His name will be long remembered for the conspicuous service he rendered to the study of the marine Invertebrate fauna of the Atlantic and Arctic areas, and for the special interest he took in deep-sea dredging at the time when the wonders of the abysses were first being revealed. The youngest son of John Norman, D.L., of Iwood, Congresbury, and Claverham House, Yatton, Somerset, he was born at Exeter in 1831, and was educated at Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his first degree in 1852.¹He was ordained deacon in 1856, and priest in 1857. After holding several curacies he was presented to the living of Burn-moor, Co. Durham, in 1866, where he spent nearly thirty years, becoming rector of Houghton-le-Spring, in the same county, in 1895, and rural dean. He was obliged by illness to give up this appointment in 1898, and he soon afterwards settled at Berkhamsted, Herts, where he died. He had become Hon. Canon of Durham Cathedral in 1885.