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MURCHISON, RODERICK IMPEY (b. Tarradale,
Ross and Cromarty, Scotland, 19 February 1792;
d. London, England, 22 October 1871), geology.
Cambrian but incorporated it too into his Silurian.
In 1846 Murchison was knighted and served as
president of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science; and in 1849 his work was
recognized by the award of the Royal Society's Copley
Medal. He later published an updated and more
popular version of his work as Siluria (1854), expressly
in order to deliver a “knock-down blow” (the
aggressive metaphor is characteristic) to those, like
Lyell, who still denied the reality of organic progression.
The book also contained an assessment of the
world's probable resources of gold, designed to
reassure those who feared that the recent Australian
gold rush presaged a slump in that metal's monetary
value. In 1855 he succeeded de la Beche as director
general of the Geological Survey of Great Britain
(thus becoming a professional scientist for the first
time), and in 1856 he was appointed to a royal
commission to report on the nation's coal reserves.
From the 1840's Murchison became increasingly
rigid and intolerant of scientific innovation. He
opposed the glacial theory of Louis Agassiz and
continued to assert that icebergs alone had been
responsible for the transport of erratic blocks (“drift”)
long after most other geologists had accepted at least
a modified glacialism: under his influence the
Geological Survey's maps long continued to use the
term “drift” for glacial and postglacial deposits.
Murchison's last major fieldwork, in 1858-1860, was
devoted to arguing that the Moine schists of the
northwestern Highlands were Silurian sediments,
although he had always favored relatively catastrophist
interpretations of mountain tectonics and had been
convinced a decade earlier of the reality of large-scale
thrusting in the Alps. He was totally opposed to
Darwin's evolutionary theory.
Murchison retired temporarily from the council of
the Geological Society in 1863 and was therefore
eligible to be awarded the Wollaston Medal the
following year. He was created a baronet in 1866. He
had earlier been one of the founders of the Royal
Geographical Society and was for many years its
president. Indeed, despite his post with the Geological
Survey, he was better known as a geographer than as
a geologist in his later years, being prominent in the
support of David Livingstone's and other expeditions.
The Murchison Falls of the Nile in Uganda are
named after him.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following are the more important of Murchison's
published works: “On the Coal-Field of Brora in Sutherlandshire,
and on Some Other Stratified Deposits in the
North of Scotland,” in Transactions of the Geological
Society of London, 2nd ser., 2, pt. 2 (1829), 293-326; “A
Sketch of the Structure of the Eastern Alps ...,” ibid.,
3,
pt. 2 (1832), 301-420, written with Adam Sedgwick;
The Silurian System, Founded on Geological Researches in
the Counties of Salop, Hereford, Radnor, Montgomery,
Caermarthen, Brecon, Pembroke, Monmouth, Gloucester,
Worcester, and Stafford; With Descriptions of the Coal-Fields
and Overlying Formations (London, 1839); “Classification
of the Older Rocks of Devonshire and Cornwall,”
in Philosophical Magazine, 14 (1839), 242-260, written with
Adam Sedgwick; “On the Classification and Distribution
of the Older or Palaeozoic Rocks of the North of Germany
and of Belgium, as Compared With Formations of the
Same Age in the British Isle,” in Transactions of the
Geological Society of London, 2nd ser., 6, pt. 2 (1842),
221-302, written with Adam Sedgwick; and The Geology
of Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains, 2 vols.
(London-Paris, 1845), written with Édouard de Verneuil
and Alexander von Keyserling--Murchison wrote the
stratigraphy in vol. I.
See also “On the Palaeozoic Deposits of Scandinavia
and the Baltic Provinces of Russia, and Their Relations to
Azoic or More Ancient Crystalline Rocks; With an Account
of Some Great Features of Dislocation and Metamorphism
Along Their Northern Frontiers,” in Quarterly Journal of
the Geological Society of London, 1 (1845), 467-494; “On
the Meaning Originally Attached to the Term ‘Cambrian
System,’ and on the Evidences Since Obtained of Its
Being Geologically Synonymous With the Previously
Established Term ‘Lower Silurian,’” ibid., 3
(1847),
165-179; “On the Geological Structure of the Alps,
Apennines and Carpathians, More Especially to Prove a
Transition From Secondary to Tertiary Rocks, and the
Development of Eocene Deposits in Southern Europe,”
ibid., 5 (1849), 157-312; Siluria. The History of the
Oldest
Known Rocks Containing Organic Remains, With a Brief
Sketch of the Distribution of Gold Over the Earth (London,
1854); and “On the Succession of the Older Rocks in the
Northernmost Counties of Scotland; With Some Observations
on the Orkney and Shetland Islands,” in Quarterly
Journal of the Geological Society of London, 15 (1859),
353-418.
Murchison's field notebooks and a collection of his
scientific correspondence are in the library of the Geological
Society of London. Material in the Institute of Geological
Sciences, London (formerly Geological Survey), is described
by John C. Thackray, “Essential Source-Material
of Roderick Murchison,” in Journal of the Society for the
Bibliography of Natural History, 6, pt. 3 (1972), 162-170.
Some excerpts from Murchison's journals and letters are
published in the only full-length biography, Archibald
Geikie, Life of Sir Roderick Murchison ... Based on His
Journals and Letters With Notices of His Scientific Contemporaries
and a Sketch of the Rise and Growth of
Palaeozoic Geology in Britain, 2 vols. (London, 1875),
which also includes a fairly full list of Murchison's
publications.