Harold Finlay

Harold John Finlay (22 March 1901 – 7 April 1951) was a New Zealand palaeontologist and conchologist.

Biography
Finlay was born in Comilla, India (now Bangladesh), on 22 March 1901, to a family of Baptist missionaries. He was left a paraplegic after contracting poliomyelitis at the age of four, but was able to participate in field excursions. The family moved to Dunedin in 1906. He graduated from the University of Otago with B.Sc. and M.Sc. He received the Hamilton Memorial Prize of the New Zealand Institute in 1926 and a D.Sc. in 1927. His main research interest was marine and non-marine malacofauna of New Zealand, both recent and fossil. Much of his work focused on mollusc taxonomy and biostratigraphy.

After graduation, Finlay ran into financial hardship, living off of research grants, and occasional work as a contract consultant for oil exploration companies. Finlay was appointed to the Geological Survey of New Zealand in 1937, where he worked a micropaleontologist studying Foraminifera. Due to this shift in scope, Finlay sold his mollusc collection to the Auckland Institute and Museum, of which there were an estimated 14,000 specimen lots, and 437 type specimens for the species that Finlay had described.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1939, and was awarded the society's Hector Memorial Medal in 1941.

Finlay died, unexpectedly, at his home in Wellington on 7 April 1951.

Personal life
Finlay married Jean Dorothy Waterson Gillies in 1937.