Albert George Long


Dr Albert George Long FRSE LLD was a British educator and palaeobotanist. He was an expert on the Lower Carboniferous period. He was creator of the Cupule-Carpel Theory.

Life

He was born in Inskip, Lancashire on 28 January 1915 the son of Rev Albert James Long, a Baptist minister, and his wife, Isabel Amblet. He attended school in Todmorden. As a schoolboy he was shot in the left foot and relied on a medical boot to walk, walking with a permanent limp. He then studied Science at Manchester University under Prof William Henry Lang. He then underwent training as a teacher, and initially took a post at Lewes in Sussex.
In 1945 he began teaching Science at Berwickshire High School in Duns in the Scottish Borders.
In 1962 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Charles Waterston, John Walton, Alexander Mackie and Claude Wardlaw. Unusually he won the Society's Makdougall-Brisbane Prize for the period 1958 to 1960, prior to being made a Fellow. In 1966 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from his alma mater and in 1967 a second honorary doctorate from Glasgow University.
In 1966 he left Duns to become Deputy Curator of the Hancock Museum in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
He died at home in Tweedmouth on 13 March 1999.

Publications

He married Gladys Hunt in 1942. They had two children, Jean and David.