Roderick Murchison. Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 1st Baronet KCB DCL FRS FRSE FLS PRGS PBA MRIA (22 February 1792[1] – 22 October 1871) was a Scottish geologist who first described and investigated the Silurian system. Early life and work[edit] After eight years of service Murchison left the army, and married Charlotte Hugonin (1788–1869), the only daughter of General Hugonin, of Nursted House, Hampshire. Murchison and his wife spent two years in mainland Europe, particularly in Italy. They then 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, after hearing that he wasted his time riding to hounds and shooting. Sir Roderick Impey Murchison posing with cane, not dated Silurian system[edit] Artist's impression of Silurian fish In 1846 he was knighted, and in the same year he presided over the meeting of the British Association at Southampton.
Scotland[edit] Later life[edit] Legacy[edit] Henry De la Beche. Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche KCB, FRS (10 February 1796 – 13 April 1855) was an English geologist and palaeontologist, the first director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, who helped pioneer early geological survey methods. Biography[edit] Henry was born in London. His father, an officer in the British Army, was a slave owner with an estate in Jamaica, but died while his son was still young. De la Beche spent his early life living with his mother in Lyme Regis, where he acquired a love for geology through his friendship with Mary Anning. At the age of fourteen he entered the military college at Great Marlow. The peace of 1815, however, changed his career. At the age of twenty-one he joined the Geological Society of London. Surveying[edit] The government then appointed him in connection with the Ordnance Survey.
Conditions of scientific testing were rudimentary; as part of his colleague Dr. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1819. Cartoons[edit] Notes[edit] Gass, K.C. Mary Anning. Mary Anning (21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847) was a British fossil collector, dealer, and paleontologist who became known around the world for a number of important finds she made in the Jurassic marine fossil beds at Lyme Regis in Dorset, where she lived.[2] Her work contributed to fundamental changes that occurred during her lifetime in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth. Anning searched for fossils in the area's Blue Lias cliffs, particularly during the winter months when landslides exposed new fossils that had to be collected quickly before they were lost to the sea. It was dangerous work, and she nearly lost her life in 1833 during a landslide that killed her dog, Tray.
Anning's gender and social class prevented her from fully participating in the scientific community of 19th-century Britain, dominated as it was by wealthy Anglican gentlemen. She struggled financially for much of her life. Life and career[edit] Childhood[edit] Birch auction[edit] Charles Lyell. Biography[edit] Lyell was born in Scotland about 15 miles north of Dundee in Kinnordy, near Kirriemuir in Forfarshire (now in Angus). He was the eldest of ten children. Lyell's father, also named Charles, was a lawyer and botanist of minor repute: it was he who first exposed his son to the study of nature. The main geographical divisions of Scotland The house/place of his birth is located in the north-west of the Central Lowlands in the valley of the Highland Boundary Fault. In 1832, Lyell married Mary Horner of Bonn, daughter of Leonard Horner (1785–1864), also associated with the Geological Society of London. During the 1840s, Lyell travelled to the United States and Canada, and wrote two popular travel-and-geology books: Travels in North America (1845) and A Second Visit to the United States (1849).
Career and major writings[edit] Lyell had private means, and earned further income as an author. Lyell between 1865 and 1870 The frontispiece from Elements of Geology Uniformitarianism[edit] James Hutton. Through observation and carefully reasoned geological arguments, Hutton came to believe that the Earth was perpetually being formed; he recognized that the history of the Earth could be determined by understanding how processes such as erosion and sedimentation work in the present day. His theories of geology and geologic time,[4] also called deep time,[5] came to be included in theories which were called plutonism and uniformitarianism.
Some of his writings anticipated the Gaia hypothesis. Early life and career[edit] After his degree Hutton returned to London, then in mid-1750 went back to Edinburgh and resumed chemical experiments with close friend, James Davie. Farming and geology[edit] This developed his interest in meteorology and geology.[11] In a 1753 letter he wrote that he had "become very fond of studying the surface of the earth, and was looking with anxious curiosity into every pit or ditch or bed of a river that fell in his way”. Edinburgh and canal building[edit] Abraham Gottlob Werner. Abraham Gottlob Werner (25 September 1749 – 30 June 1817), was a German geologist who set out an early theory about the stratification of the Earth's crust and propounded an earth history that others labeled Neptunism. While most tenets of Neptunism were eventually set aside, science is indebted to Werner for clearly demonstrating the chronological succession of rocks, for the zeal which he infused into his pupils, and for the impulse which he thereby gave to the study of geology.[1] Much of his work was based on pre-existing traditions of stratigraphy and cosmogony in Europe.[2] He has been called the “father of German geology.”
Life[edit] Werner was born in Wehrau (now Osiecznica, Lower Silesian Voivodeship), a village in Prussian Silesia. His family had been involved in the mining industry for many years. While in Leipzig, Werner became interested in the systematic identification and classification of minerals. Werner's theory[edit] Theory's criticism[edit] Legacy[edit] Works[edit] William Smith (geologist) William 'Strata' Smith (23 March 1769 – 28 August 1839) was 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. Below is an extract from his writings in which he describes his experiences when living in High Littleton and Bath, Somerset. I resided from 1791-1795 in a part of the large old manor house belonging to Lady JONES called Rugburn in High Littleton.
William Smith's Grave. Christian Leopold von Buch. Christian Leopold von Buch (April 26, 1774 – March 4, 1853) was a German geologist and paleontologist born in Stolpe an der Oder (now a part of Angermünde, Brandenburg) and is remembered as one of the most important contributors to geology in the first half of the nineteenth century. His scientific interest was devoted to a broad spectrum of geological topics: volcanism, fossils, stratigraphy and more.
His most remembered accomplishment is the scientific definition of the jurassic system. Biography[edit] He studied together with Alexander von Humboldt under Abraham Gottlob Werner at the mining school in Freiberg, Saxony. He afterwards completed his education at the universities of Halle and Göttingen. German and Italian explorations[edit] He began writing on geological topics early in life. Scandinavian explorations[edit] In 1806, von Buch proceeded to Scandinavia, and spent two years in examining its physical constitution. Canary Islands and the Atlantic[edit] He died in Berlin. Works[edit] Georges Cuvier. Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier (French: [kyvje]; August 23, 1769 – May 13, 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist. Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early nineteenth century and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils.
Among his other accomplishments, Cuvier established that elephant-like bones found in the USA belonged to an extinct animal he later would name as a mastodon, and that a large skeleton dug up in Paraguay was of Megatherium, a giant, prehistoric sloth. He also named (but did not discover) the aquatic reptile Mosasaurus and the pterosaur Pterodactylus, and was one of the first people to suggest the earth had been dominated by reptiles, rather than mammals, in prehistoric times. Cuvier also is remembered for strongly opposing the evolutionary theories of Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. William Buckland. William Buckland DD FRS (12 March 1784 – 14 August 1856) was an English theologian who became Dean of Westminster. he was also a geologist and palaeontologist, writing 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 praised as an example of how scientific analysis could reconstruct events from the distant past.
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 life and university[edit] Rejection of flood geology and Kirkdale Cave[edit] Adam Sedgwick. Adam Sedgwick (22 March 1785 – 27 January 1873) was one of the founders of modern geology. He proposed the Devonian period of the geological timescale. Later, he proposed the Cambrian period, based on work which he did on Welsh rock strata. Though he had guided the young Charles Darwin in his early study of geology and continued to be on friendly terms, Sedgwick was an outspoken opponent of Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection.
[citation needed] Life and career[edit] Sedgwick was born in Dent, Yorkshire, the third child of an Anglican vicar. Sedgwick studied the geology of the British Isles and Europe. Geological views and evolution[edit] The Church of England, by no means a fundamentalist or evangelical church, encloses a wide range of beliefs. "No opinion can be heretical, but that which is not true....
He strongly believed that species of organisms originated in a succession of Divine creative acts throughout the long expanse of history. Sedgwick in 1867 Notes[edit] Karl Ernst von Baer. Karl Ernst Ritter von Baer, Edler von Huthorn (Russian: Карл Эрнст фон Бэр), 28 February [O.S. 17 February] 1792 – 28 November [O.S. 16 November] 1876 was an Estonian scientist and explorer. Baer is also known in Russia as Karl Maksimovich Baer (Russian: Карл Макси́мович Бэр).
Baer was a naturalist, biologist, geologist, meteorologist, geographer and a founding father of embryology. He was an explorer of European Russia and Scandinavia. He was a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a co-founder of the Russian Geographical Society and the first President of the Russian Entomological Society, making him a distinguished Baltic German scientist. Coat of arms of Baer family Life[edit] Karl Ernst von Baer was born into a Baltic German noble family in the Piep estate, Kreis Jerwen, Governorate of Estonia (in present-day Lääne-Viru County, Estonia), as a Knight by birthright. Contributions[edit] Embryology[edit] Karl Ernst von Baer He formulated what became known as Baer's laws of embryology: Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg. Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (19 April 1795 – 27 June 1876), German naturalist, zoologist, comparative anatomist, geologist, and microscopist, was one of the most famous and productive scientists of his time.
Early collections[edit] The son of a judge, Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg was born in Delitzsch, near Leipzig. He first studied theology at the University of Leipzig, then medicine and natural sciences in Berlin and became a friend of the famous explorer Alexander von Humboldt. In 1818, he completed his doctoral dissertation on fungi, Sylvae mycologicae Berolinenses. In 1820–1825, on a scientific expedition to the Middle East with his friend Wilhelm Hemprich, he collected thousands of specimens of plants and animals. He investigated parts of Egypt, the Libyan desert, the Nile valley and the northern coasts of the Red Sea,[1] where he made a special study of the corals. Subsequently parts of Syria, Arabia and Abyssinia were examined. Focus on microscopic organisms[edit] Legacy[edit]