He was the son of the vicar of Debenham, Charles John Cornish (1834-1913) and Anne Charlotte Cornish (1831-1887). His brother was Charles John Cornish.[2] He was educated at home before attending St Paul's School, London, when he was 17. He studied chemistry at the Victoria University of Manchester, graduating with a first class BSc (1888). He then gained a MSc (1892) and a DSc (1901).[2]
He visited the building of the Panama Canal in 1907, documented in his The Panama Canal and its Makers (1909). He visited the site again in 1910. He was interested in the strategy and political geography of the British Empire, hoping that British emigration to the Empire would promote the future interests of the "white races".[2]
In 1906 he was elected as a Honorary Member of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society.[3] In 1928-29, he served as the President of the Geographical Association in the UK.
His later works were focussed on the geography and legends of the British Isles, which he would often approach in a fearlessly original manner. In his 1941 survey of historic thorn trees, he suggested that the winter-flowering Glastonbury Thorn, which he thought might have functioned as the meeting-point for the hundred of Glaston Twelve Hides, may have been planted by the monks of Glastonbury to lure local pagans away from the lustful associations of more ordinary hawthorns, which flowered in May when human sap ran high; it was, he claimed, 'a remarkable combination of nature knowledge with tactful piety’.[4]
Works
The Panama Canal and its Makers (1909).
Waves of the Sea and other Water Waves (1910).
The Travels of Ellen Cornish: being the Memoir of a Pilgrim of Science (1913).
The Waves of Sand and Snow (1914).
Naval and Military Geography (1916).
Imperial Military Geography (1920).
A Geography of Imperial Defence (1922).
The Great Capitals (1923).
National Parks and the Heritage of Scenery (1930).
The Poetic Impression of Natural Scenery (1931).
The Scenery of England (1932).
Borderlands of Language in Europe (1933).
Ocean Waves and Kindred Geophysical Phenomena (1934).
1 2 3 G. R. Crone, ‘Cornish, Vaughan (1862–1948)’, rev. David Matless, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2006, accessed 11 July 2015.
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