Percy A. Wagner, geologist, was the son of John M. Wagner and his wife Bertha Hoffa, both of German origin. He matriculated through the University of the Cape of Good Hope in 1902. From 1919 he was a full-time geologist in the Geological Survey of South Africa, concentrating on economic geology. In 1927 he left the Geological Survey to become consultant to the Union Minerals Exploration Syndicate in Johannesburg. He died two years later, at the age of only 44, of enteric fever followed by pleurisy and pneumonia.