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Adam Sedgwick

British geologist and mathematician (1785–1873)

Sedgwick was the son of the vicar of Dent in England. He graduated in mathematics from Cambridge University in 1808, was made a fellow in 1810, and was elected to the Woodwardian Chair of Geology in 1818, a post he retained until his death. He was made president of the Geological Society in 1829.

In 1831 he began a study of the Paleozoic rocks of Wales, choosing an older region than the Silurian recently discovered by Roderick Murchison. In 1835 he named the oldest fossiliferous strata the Cambrian (after Cambria, the ancient name for Wales). This immediately caused a problem for there was no reliable way to distinguish the Upper Cambrian from the Lower Silurian.

Sedgwick formed a close friendship with Murchison. The two made their most significant joint investigation with their identification of the Devonian System from studies in southwest England in 1839. The partnership between Sedgwick and Murchison was broken when Murchison annexed what Sedgwick considered to be his Upper Cambrian into the Silurian. The bitter dispute between the two over these Lower Paleozoic strata was not resolved until after Sedgwick's death, when Charles Lapworth proposed that the strata should form a new system – the Ordovician.

Sedgwick's works included A Synopsis of the Classification of the British Paleozoic Rocks (1855). In 1841, largely due to Sedgwick, a museum now bearing his name was opened to house the growing geological collection. Sedgwick was, throughout his life, a committed opponent of Darwin's theory of evolution.

 
 
Biography: Adam Sedgwick

The English geologist Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) was the founder of the Cambrian system, the first period of the Paleozoic geologic era.

Adam Sedgwick was born on March 22, 1785, at Dent in his ancestral region of the Yorkshire Dales. In 1804 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, which became his chief home for the rest of his life. After being made a fellow in 1810, he was ordained; he later became a canon of Norwich. In 1818 he was elected to the professorship of geology, not because he knew anything about geology but on his general merits. However, he began enthusiastically to study the subject, giving lectures and making geological tours, but he constantly allowed himself to be diverted by business irrelevant to his geological work.

During 1821-1824 Sedgwick carried out researches in the north of England - on the Magnesian Limestone and New Red Sandstone and in the Lake District - but he delayed in the announcement and publication of his findings. Nevertheless, his standing in the world of science at that time and his general popularity were recognized by his being elected president of the Geological Society of London in 1829 and president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1833.

In 1831 Sedgwick began the work which will always be associated with his name: the establishing of a rock-succession, the revealing of a grand structure among the mountains of North Wales, and the consequent founding of the Cambrian system. He did not put his researches into writing, and this was the chief cause of the regrettable controversy which eventually developed with Roderick Murchison over priorities of discovery and nomenclature among these Lower Paleozoic rocks (as they soon came to be called). However, Sedgwick did compose a few important treatises on the structure of rock-masses. In 1839 he and Murchison reported the results of their joint work which founded the Devonian system.

Thereafter Sedgwick's duties at his college and university caused his geological work, other than his lectures and the augmentation of his collections, to be almost entirely laid aside. Sedgwick never married. He died at Cambridge on Jan. 27, 1873. His lasting memorial is the Sedgwick Museum at Cambridge, opened in 1904, one of the most famous geological schools.

Sedgwick's reputation as a geologist and as a man rests almost entirely on his personality, which was conspicuous for its integrity, vigor, and charm, though he could be bitter in controversy. The influence of his presence and the power of his spoken word are not to be gathered from contemporary written records.

Further Reading

Sedgwick's A Discourse on the Studies of the University was recently reprinted with an introduction by Eric Ashby and Mary Anderson (1969), which focuses on Sedgwick's personality, his career as a teacher, and his efforts at educational reform. The standard biography is John Willis Clark and Thomas McKenny Hughes, The Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick (2 vols., 1890). Additional light is thrown on Sedgwick and his work in Sir Archibald Geikie, The Founders of Geology (1897; 2d ed. 1905), and Horace B. Woodward, The History of the Geological Society of London (1907). A good profile of Sedgwick is in Carroll Lane Fenton and Mildred Adams Fenton, Giants of Geology (1945; rev. ed. 1952).

Additional Sources

Speakman, Colin, Adam Sedgwick, geologist and dalesman, 1785-1873: a biography in twelve themes, Broad Oak, Heathfield, East Sussex: Broad Oak Press, 1982.

 

(born March 22, 1785, Dent, Yorkshire, Eng. — died Jan. 27, 1873, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) English geologist. A pioneer in the establishment of geology as a university discipline (Trinity College, Oxford), he named the Cambrian Period and (with Roderick Murchison) the Devonian Period. His grandnephew, the zoologist Adam Sedgwick (1854 – 1913), first established the evolutionary link between the annelids and the arthropods.

For more information on Adam Sedgwick, visit Britannica.com.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Sedgwick, Adam,
1785–1873, English geologist. He was a professor at Cambridge from 1818. His most important work was a study, made with R. I. Murchison, of the rock formation of Devonshire, which they named the Devonian system. Sedgwick also introduced the term Cambrian.

Bibliography

See J. W. Clark and T. M. Hughes, The Life and Letters of the Rev. Adam Sedgwick (2 vol., 1890).

 
Wikipedia: Adam Sedgwick
Adam Sedgwick
Adam_Sedgwick.jpg
Adam Sedgwick
Born March 22nd, 1785
Dent, Yorkshire
Died January 27 1873
Cambridge, England
Residence Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.svg UK
Nationality Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.svg British
Field Geologist
Institutions University of Cambridge
Alma mater University of Cambridge
Academic advisor   Thomas Jones and John Dawson
Notable students   William Hopkins
Charles Darwin
Known for Classification of Cambrian rocks
Notable prizes Wollaston Medal (1833)
Copley Medal (1863)
Religion Anglican

Adam Sedgwick (March 22nd, 1785January 27, 1873) was one of the founders of modern geology. He proposed the Devonian period of the geological timescale and later the Cambrian period. The latter proposal was based on work which he did on Welsh rock strata.

Sedgwick was born in Dent, Yorkshire, the third child of an Anglican vicar. He was educated at Sedbergh School and Trinity College, Cambridge.

He obtained his BA (5th Wrangler) from the University of Cambridge in 1808 and his MA in 1811. His academic mentors at Cambridge were Thomas Jones and John Dawson.

Sedwick studied the geology of the British Isles and Europe. He founded the system for the classification of Cambrian rocks and with Roderick Murchison worked out the order of the carboniferous and underlying Devonian strata. He investigated the phenomena of metamorphism and concretion, and was the first to distinguish clearly between stratification, jointing, and slaty cleavage. He was elected to Fellow of the Royal Society on February 1, 1821.

Opposition to Evolution

While by no means a fundamentalist or evangelical by today’s standards, Sedgwick always maintained a fine line between his science and his faith. His geological position was catastrophist, and he believed in a succession of Divine creative acts throughout the long expanse of history. Any form of development that denied a direct creative action smacked as materialistic and amoral. For Sedgwick, moral truths (the obtainment of which separates man from beast) were to be distinguished from physical truths, and to combine these or blur them together could only lead to disastrous consequences. In fact, one’s own hope for immortality may ultimately rest on it.

So, when Robert Chambers anonymously published his own theory of evolution, or development, in the book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), Sedgwick jumped at the chance to attack the book in the July, 1845 edition of the Edinburgh Review. Vestiges "comes before [its readers] with a bright, polished, and many-coloured surface, and the serpent coils a false philosophy, and asks them to stretch out their hands and pluck the forbidden fruit," he wrote in his review. [1] Accepting the arguments in Vestiges was akin to falling from grace and away from God’s favor.

He lashed out at the book in a letter to Charles Lyell, bemoaning the consequences of it conclusions. "...If the book be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain; religion is a lie; human law is a mass of folly, and a base injustice; morality is moonshine; our labours for the black people of Africa were works of madmen; and man and woman are only better beasts!"[2] Later, Sedgwick would add a long preface to the 5th edition of his Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge (1850), including a lengthy attack on Vestiges and theories of development in general.

Charles Darwin was one of his geological students and the two kept up a correspondence while Darwin was aboard the HMS Beagle. However, Sedgwick never accepted the case for evolution made in the Origin of Species any more than he did in the Vestiges. In response to receiving and reading Darwin's book, he wrote to Darwin saying:

"If I did not think you a good tempered and truth-loving man I should not tell you that ... I have read your book with more pain than pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly; parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore; other parts I read with absolute sorrow; because I think them utterly false and grievously mischievous. You have deserted - after a start in that tram-road of all solid physical truth - the true method of induction ..."[3]

In the same letter, once again, Sedgwick emphasized his distinction between the moral and physical aspects of life, "There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical. A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly." To break this distinction would be to degrade and brutalize humanity. In a letter to another correspondent, Sedgwick was even harsher on Darwin's book, calling it "utterly false" and writing that "It repudiates all reasoning from final causes; and seems to shut the door on any view (however feeble) of the God of Nature as manifested in His works. From first to last it is a dish of rank materialism cleverly cooked and served up."[4]

Despite this difference of opinion, the two men remained friendly until Sedgwick's death.

Notes

  1. ^ Quoted in James Secord, Victorian Sensation (2000), pg. 246.
  2. ^ Letter of Adam Sedgwick to Charles Lyell, April 9th, 1845, in The Life and Letters of the Rev. Adam Sedgwick vol. 2 (1890), pg. 84.
  3. ^ Letter to Charles Darwin from Adam Sedgwick, November 24th, 1859, in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin vol. 7, pg. 396.
  4. ^ Letter to Miss Gerard from Adam Sedgwick, Jan. 2nd, 1860, in The Life and Letters of the Rev. Adam Sedgwick vol. 2 (1890), pgs. 359-360.

References

  • J.W. Clark and T.M. Hughes, The Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, Cambridge University Press, 1890, vols. 1-2.
  • Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons: 1970-1990; vol. 12, pp. 275-279.
  • A Biographical Dictionary of Scientists, Williams, T. I., Ed., Wiley, 1969, pp. 467-468.
  • Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (2nd Ed.), Doubleday: 1982, p. 299.
  • Quart. J. Geol. Soc., 1873, 29, pp. xxx-xxxix.
  • Dictionary of National Biography, Smith, Elder & Co., 1908-1986, vol. 17, pp. 1117-1120.

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Scientist. A Dictionary of Scientists. Copyright © Market House Books Ltd 1993, 1999, 2003. All rights reserved.  Read more
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Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Adam Sedgwick" Read more

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