NOTES,
on people mentioned in Thomas Perry’s Geology notebook
William
Daniel Conybeare FRS (7/6/1787 – 12/8/1857)
Dean of Llandaff, was an English
geologist, palaeontologist and clergyman. He is probably best known for his
ground-breaking work on marine reptile fossils in the 1820s, including
important papers for the Geological Society of London on ichthyosaur anatomy
and the first published scientific description of a plesiosaur.
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The
Very Rev. Dr William Buckland DD FRS (12/3/1784 – 14/8/1856)
An English theologian who became Dean of
Westminster, and a geologist and palaeontologist, who wrote the first full
account of a fossil dinosaur, which he named Megalosaurus.
His work proving that Kirkdale Cave had
been a prehistoric hyena den, for which he was awarded the Copley Medal, was
widely praised as an example of how detailed scientific analysis could be used
to understand geohistory by reconstructing events from deep time. He was a
pioneer in the use of fossilized faeces, for which he coined the term
coprolites, to reconstruct ancient ecosystems.
Buckland was a proponent of the Gap Theory
that interpreted the biblical account of Genesis as referring to two separate
episodes of creation separated by a lengthy period; it emerged in the late 18th
and early 19th centuries as a way to reconcile the scriptural account with
discoveries in geology that suggested the earth was very old. Early in his
career he believed that he had found geologic evidence of the biblical flood,
but later became convinced that the glaciation theory of Louis Agassiz provided
a better explanation, and he played an important role in promoting that theory
in Great Britain.
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Sir
Roderick Impey Murchison, 1st Baronet KCB etc (22/2/1792 – 22/10/1871)
A Scottish geologist who first described
and investigated the Silurian system.
Murchison and his wife spent two years in
mainland Europe, particularly in Italy, settled in Barnard Castle, County
Durham, England in 1818 where Murchison made the acquaintance of Sir Humphry
Davy. Davy urged Murchison to turn his energy to science, became fascinated by
the young science of geology and joined the Geological Society of London, soon
becoming one of its most active members. His colleagues there included Adam
Sedgwick, William Conybeare, William Buckland, William Fitton, Charles Lyell
and Charles Darwin.
Exploring with his wife, Murchison studied
the geology of the south of England, devoting special attention to the rocks of
the north-west of Sussex and the adjoining parts of Hampshire and Surrey, on
which, aided by Fitton, he wrote his first scientific paper, read to the
Geological Society of London in 1825.
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Robert
Bakewell (1768–1843)
An English geologist, from 1811 onwards he
lectured on geology all over the country, exhibiting sections of rock formation
and a geological map, the first of its kind.
Bakewell’s Introduction to Geology
appeared in 1813. The work was widely read and appreciated, largely because it
used examples and illustrations taken from the English countryside. A second,
enlarged edition appeared in 1815, a third edition in 1828, a fourth edition in
1833, and a final edition in 1838.
Bakewell’s brightly ironic style
contributed greatly to the popularity of the Introduction, and perhaps accounts
for the book’s continued success despite its being outdated by advances in the
subject. William Smith’s ideas of using fossils for the correlation of strata,
for example, were never included in the Introduction.
Bakewell appreciated James Hutton’s
“plutonic” ideas while failing to grasp the principle of uniformity. He was
highly critical of the geognosy of the Wernerian school, missing no opportunity
to disparage it, and he rejected “neptunism,” depending almost entirely on
volcanic processes to account for rock formations. Like Baron Cuvier, a French
contemporary, Bakewell found evidence in the rocks for geological revolutions
of great magnitude with quiet intervals lasting tens of thousands of years.
In addition to the Introduction, Bakewell
wrote many articles on geological and biological subjects. Most of these
appeared in the Philosophical Magazine, although one was published by the
Geological Society of London, to which Bakewell was never admitted as a member.
One of his sons, also named Robert Bakewell, wrote on geology, and the three
articles on the Falls of Niagara listed for the elder Bakewell in the Royal
Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers were written by his son.
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James
Ussher (sometimes spelled Usher, 4/1/1581 – 21/3/1656)
Church of
Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland between 1625 and 1656.
He was a prolific scholar, who most famously published a chronology that
purported to establish the time and date of the creation as the night preceding
Sunday, 23 October 4004 BC, according to the proleptic Julian calendar.
Ussher published a treatise on the
calendar in 1648. This was a warm-up for his most famous work, the Annales veteris
testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti ("Annals of the Old Testament,
deduced from the first origins of the world"), which appeared in 1650, and
its continuation, Annalium pars postierior, published in 1654. In this work, he
calculated the date of the Creation to have been nightfall preceding 23 October
4004 BC. (Other scholars, such as Cambridge academic, John Lightfoot,
calculated their own dates for the Creation.) The time of the Ussher chronology
is frequently misquoted as being 9 a.m., noon or 9 p.m. on 23 October.
The chronology is sometimes called the
Ussher-Lightfoot chronology because John Lightfoot published a similar
chronology in 1642–1644. This, however, is a misnomer, as the chronology is
based on Ussher's work alone and not that of Lightfoot.
Ussher's proposed date of 4004 BC differed
little from other Biblically based estimates, such as those of Jose ben Halafta
(3761 BC), Bede (3952 BC), Ussher's near-contemporary Scaliger (3949 BC),
Johannes Kepler (3992 BC) or Sir Isaac Newton (c. 4000 BC).
Ussher's specific choice of starting year
may have been influenced by the then-widely-held belief that the Earth's
potential duration was 6,000 years (4,000 before the birth of Christ and 2,000
after), corresponding to the six days of Creation, on the grounds that
"one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one
day" (2 Peter 3:8). This view remains to be held as recently as AD 2000,
six thousand years after 4004 BC.
Having established the first day of creation,
Ussher calculated the dates of other biblical events, concluding, for example,
that Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise on Monday 10 November 4004 BC, and
that the ark touched down on Mt Ararat on 5 May 2348 BC `on a Wednesday'.
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William
'Strata' Smith (23/3/1769 – 28/8/1839)
An English
geologist, credited with creating the first nationwide geological map. He is
known as the "Father of English Geology" for collating the geological
history of England and Wales into a single record, although recognition was
very slow in coming. At the time his map was first published he was overlooked
by the scientific community; his relatively humble education and family
connections preventing him from mixing easily in learned society. Consequently
his work was plagiarised, he was financially ruined, and he spent time in
debtors' prison. It was only much later in his life that Smith received
recognition for his accomplishments.
In 1799 Smith
produced the first large scale geologic map of the area around Bath, Somerset.
Previously, he only knew how to draw the vertical extent of the rocks, but not
how to display them horizontally. However, in the Somerset County Agricultural
Society, he found a map showing the types of soils and vegetation around Bath
and their geographical extent. Importantly, the differing types were coloured.
Using this technique, Smith could draw a geological map from his observations
showing the outcrops of the rocks. He took a few rock types, each with its own colour.
Then he estimated the boundaries of each of the outcrops of rock, filled them
in with colour and ended up with a crude geological map.
In 1801, he drew a rough sketch of what
would become "The Map that Changed the World" [brilliant book!!].
Because he was unemployed, he could travel across the length and breadth of the
country while meeting some prominent people such as Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of
Leicester, and the Duke of Bedford.
In 1815 he published the first geological
map of Britain. It covered the whole of England and Wales, and parts of
Scotland, making it the first geologic map covering such a large area ever
published. Conventional symbols were used to mark canals, tunnels, tramways and
roads, collieries, lead, copper and tin mines, together with salt and alum
works.
The various geological types were
indicated by different colours; the maps were hand coloured. Nevertheless, the
map is remarkably similar to modern geological maps of England. He also
published his Delineation of the Strata of England in the same year. In another
of his books Strata Identified by Organized Fossils (London 1816-1819) he
recognised that strata contained distinct fossil assemblages which could be
used to match rocks across regions.
In 1817 he drew a remarkable geological
section from Snowdon to London. Unfortunately, his maps were soon plagiarised
and sold for prices lower than he was asking. He went into debt and finally
became bankrupt.
On 31 August 1819 Smith was released from
King's Bench Prison in London, a debtor's prison. He returned to his home of
fourteen years at 15 Buckingham Street to find a bailiff at the door and his
home and property seized. Smith then worked as an itinerant surveyor for many
years until one of his employers, Sir John Johnstone, recognised him and took
steps to gain for him the respect he deserved.
Between 1824 and 1826 he lived and worked
in Scarborough, and was responsible for the building of the Rotunda, a
geological museum devoted to the Yorkshire coast.
It was not until February 1831 that the
Geological Society of London conferred on Smith the first Wollaston Medal in
recognition of his achievement. It was on this occasion that the President,
Adam Sedgwick, referred to Smith as "the Father of English Geology".
Smith travelled to Dublin with the British
Association in 1835, and there totally unexpectedly received an honorary
Doctorate of Laws (LL.D.) from Trinity College. In 1838 he was appointed as one
of the commissioners to select building-stone for the new Palace of
Westminster. He died in Northampton in 1839.
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