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William Kennett Loftus was born in Rye, Sussex in c 1821. He was educated at Newcastle Grammar School, a school in Twickenham and later at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where he did not take a degree. Loftus' interest in geology may have been inspired by the lectures of Prof Adam Sedgwick, Woodwardian Professor at Cambridge, certainly it was Sedgwick who proposed Loftus as a Fellow of the Society in 1842.
Sir Henry De la Beche, Director of the Geological Survey, recommended Loftus to Lord Palmerston for the post of geologist on the staff of Sir William Fenwick Williams on the Turco-Persian frontier commission. This joint commission, consisting of representatives appointed by the British, Russian, Turkish and Persian governments, was charged with defining the border between Turkey and Persia [now Iran], the work which it undertook between 1849-1852.
The publication of the paper was delayed due to a bout of ill health and Loftus' absorption in his archaelogical digs around the biblical cities of Mesopotamia. In 1855, Loftus was appointed to the Geological Survey of India however his health, already weakened from a fever which he developed in the swamps of Assyria, completely broke down due to sunstroke. He died on the return voyage aboard the Tyburnia on 27 November 1858 from the effects of an abscess of the liver.