Sir Roderick Impey Murchison posing with cane, not dated
Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 1st Baronet KCB FRS (19 February, 1792 -
22 October, 1871), was an influential Scottish geologist who first described and investigated the Silurian system.
Early life
He was born at Tarradale, Ross and Cromarty,
Scotland, the son of Kenneth Murchison (died 1796). He attended Durham School , and then the military college at Great Marlow to be trained for the army. In 1808 he
landed with Wellesley in Galicia, and was present at the actions of Roliça and
Vimeiro. Subsequently under Sir John Moore he took part in the retreat to Corunna and the final battle there.
Geology
After eight years of service he left the army, and married the daughter of General Hugonin, of Nursted House, Hampshire. They
spent two years in mainland Europe, particularly in Italy. They then settled in Barnard Castle, County Durham, England in 1818. when Murchison made the acquaintance
of Sir Humphry Davy, who urged him to turn his energy to science, after hearing that he
wasted his time riding to hounds and shooting. He became fascinated by the young science of geology. He joined the
Geological Society of London and soon showed himself 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, the geology of the south of England, he devoted 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 society in
1825. Turning his attention to Continental geology, he explored with Lyell the volcanic region of Auvergne, parts of southern France, northern Italy, Tyrol and Switzerland. A little later,
with Sedgwick as his companion, he attacked the difficult problem of the geological structure of the Alps, and their joint paper giving the results of their study is one of the classics in the literature of Alpine
geology.
In 1831 he went to the border of England and Wales, to attempt to discover whether the
greywacke rocks underlying the Old Red Sandstone
could be grouped into a definite order of succession. The result was the establishment of the Silurian system under which were grouped for the first time a remarkable series of formations, each replete
with distinctive organic remains other than and very different from those of the other rocks of England. These researches,
together with descriptions of the coal-fields and overlying formations in south Wales and the English border counties, were
embodied in The Silurian System (1839).Geology of Wales
The establishment of the Silurian system was followed by that of the Devonian system, an
investigation in which Murchison assisted, both in the south-west of England and in the Rhineland. Soon afterwards Murchison projected an important geological campaign in Russia with the view of extending to that part of the Continent the classification he had succeeded in
elaborating for the older rocks of western Europe. He was accompanied by Edouard de
Verneuil (1805 - 1873) and Count Alexander von Keyserling (1815 - 1891), in
conjunction with whom he produced a work on Russia and the Ural Mountains. The
publication of this monograph in 1845 completes the first and most active half of Murchison’s scientific career.
In 1846 he was knighted, and in the same year he presided over the meeting of the British Association at Southampton. During the later years of his life a large part of his time was devoted to the affairs
of the Royal Geographical Society, of which he was in 1830 one of the
founders, and he was president 1843-1845, 1851-1853, 1856-1859 and 1862-1871.
The chief geological investigation of the last decade of his life was devoted to the Highlands of Scotland, where he believed he had succeeded in showing that the vast masses of
crystalline schists, previously supposed to be part of what used to be termed the Primitive
formations, were really not older than the Silurian period, for that underneath them lay beds of limestone and quartzite containing Lower Silurian (Cambrian) fossils. Subsequent research, however, has shown that this
infraposition of the fossiliferous rocks is not their original place, but has been brought about by a gigantic system of
dislocations, whereby successive masses of the oldest gneisses, have been torn up from below and
thrust bodily over the younger formations.
In 1855 Murchison was appointed director-general of the Geological Survey of the United
Kingdom and director of the Royal School of Mines and the Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, London, in succession to Sir Henry De la Beche, who had
been the first to hold these offices. Official routine now occupied much of his time, but he found opportunity for the Highland
researches just alluded to, and also for preparing successive editions of his work Siluria (1854, ed. 5, 1872), which was
meant to present the main features of the original Silurian System together with a digest of subsequent discoveries, particularly
of those which showed the extension of the Silurian classification into other countries.
Funerary monument, Brompton Cemetery, London
Later life
In 1863 he was made a KCB, and three years later was created a baronet. The learned societies of his own country bestowed their highest rewards upon him: the Royal Society gave him the Copley medal, the Geological Society its
Wollaston medal, and the Royal Society of
Edinburgh its Brisbane Medal. There was hardly a foreign scientific society of note which
had not his name enrolled among its honorary members. The French Academy of
Sciences awarded him the prix Cuvier, and elected him one of its eight foreign members in succession to Michael Faraday.
One of the closing public acts of Murchison’s life was the founding of a chair of geology and mineralogy at the
University of Edinburgh. Under his will there was established the
Murchison Medal and a geological fund (The
Murchison Fund) to be awarded annually by the council of the Geological Society in London.
Murchison died in 1871, and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.[1]
Personal life
He was married to Charlotte Hugonin (8 April 1788 - 9 February 1869), only daughter of Gerneal Hugonin
Legacy
The Murchison crater on the Moon and at least
fifteen geographical locations on Earth are named after him.
Memorial tablet
The memorial tablet of Murchison was installed November 3, 2005, in front of School #9 in Perm ([2], [3]). It consists of stone of irregular form about 2 meters long and a dark stone plate with inscription:
To Roderick Impey Murchison, scottish geologist, explorer of Perm Krai, who gives to the last period of Paleozoic era the name
of Perm.
The decision to perpetuate explorer's name was accepted by the school administration and pupils in connection with discussion
of idea to establish in Perm a pillar or an arch devoted to Roderick Murchison.
Works
- Geology of Cheltenham (1834)
- The Silurian System (1839)
- On the Geological Structure of the Northern and Central Regions of Russia in Europe (1841)
- Geology of Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains (1845)
Literature
- Geikie, Life of Sir Roderick I. Murchison (London, 1875)
References
- John L. Morton, King of Siluria — How Roderick Murchison Changed the Face of Geology (Brocken Spectre Publishing,
2004, ISBN 0-9546829-0-4)
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
- Martin J. S. Rudwick, The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of
Scientific Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists (University of Chicago Press, 1985) — the rise of Murchison to power
- James A. Secord, Controversy in Victorian Geology: The Cambrian-Silurian Dispute
(Princeton University Press, 1986) — documents the battle between Murchison and Adam
Sedgwick
|
Presidents of the Royal
Geographical Society |
19th Century: Viscount Goderich · George Murray · Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet · William Richard Hamilton · George Bellas Greenough · Roderick Murchison · Lord Colchester · W. J. Hamilton · William Henry Smyth · Roderick Murchison · Earl of Ellesmere · Frederick William Beechey · Roderick Murchison · Baron Ashburton · Roderick Murchison · Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st
Baronet · Henry Bartle
Frere · Sir Henry
Rawlinson, 1st Baronet · Rutherford
Alcock · Thomas
Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook · Henry Bruce, 1st Baron Aberdare ·
Marquis of Lorne ·
Richard Strachey · Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff ·
Sir Clements Robert Markham ·
20th Century: George Taubman Goldie · Leonard Darwin · George Curzon, 1st Marquess
Curzon of Kedleston · Douglas
Freshfield · Leonard
Darwin · Thomas Holdich · Francis Younghusband · Earl of
Ronaldshay · David George
Hogarth · Charles Close · William Goodenough · Percy Zachariah Cox · Henry Balfour ·
Philip Chetwode, 1st Baron Chetwode · George Clark ·
Francis Rodd, 2nd Baron Rennell · Harry Lindsay ·
James Wordie · James
Marshall-Cornwall · Lord Nathan · Raymond Priestley · Dudley Stamp ·
Gilbert Laithwaite · Edmund
Irving · Edward
Shackleton, Baron Shackleton · Duncan
Cumming · Lord Hunt · Michael Wise · Vivian Fuchs · George Bishop ·
Roger Chorley, 2nd Baron Chorley · Crispin Tickell · George Jellicoe, 2nd Earl
Jellicoe · John Palmer,
4th Earl of Selborne ·
21st Century: Ronald Urwick Cooke ·
Neil Cossons · Gordon Conway ·
|
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
