38 | Great Geologists
Sir Roderick Murchison
Murchison “King of Siluria” in front of the
cheering crowd. Murchison was at the
time one of the titans of British, indeed
international, geology and his recognition
was well-deserved. Indeed it is doubtful
if any geologist has received so many
honours as Murchison, both real and those
given in well-meant jest.
In his youth Murchison showed little
sign that he would become one of the
geological greats. He was born in northern
Scotland in 1792 to a land-owning family
and received a typical schooling for the
gentry of the time in Durham. He was no
more than an average student and initially
chose a military career serving in the
Peninsula War.
By 1815 he had decided against a soldier’s
career and lived on the income of his
family estates to pursue a life that largely
revolved around shooting and fox-hunting.
Two events were to spark his interest
Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 1st Baronet
in geology. First was his marriage. His
by Stephen Pearce. A portrait from 1856.
wife Charlotte encouraged him to take
an interest in culture and a European tour
The industrial West Midlands of England
including visits to the Alps may have stirred
may appear at first glance unpromising
his interest in the rocks he saw and their
territory for field work, but are in fact the
formation. She was a trained artist and
location for some important Paleozoic
her skilled field sketches were to illustrate
outcrops. These include the former quarry many of Murchison’s publications. The
called Wren’s Nest and associated caverns second event was a meeting in 1823
in Wenlock (Silurian) Limestone near
with Sir Humphrey Davy, the celebrated
Dudley. A remarkable spectacle occurred
chemist, during a shooting party. Davy
here in 1849. According to contemporary
encouraged him to attend scientific
reports, 15,000 people turned out to hear
lectures in London (a fashionable pursuit
Roderick Murchison give a geological
for gentlemen of the age) and Murchison
lecture in the candlelit caverns, which
struck upon those of The Geological
was followed by a procession to the top
Society as being of particular interest. The
of the Wren’s Nest site where the Bishop
extent to which geology resonated with
of Oxford, with an appropriate degree
him is that only seven years after joining
of mock ceremony, proceeded to crown
The Geological Society in 1824 he was
elected its President (he read his first paper
to the society in December 1825). The
reason for his advancement was no doubt
in part due to his energy, organisational
abilities and his connections in society, but
it was also due to his natural skill in the
science and his enthusiasm for fieldwork
and documentation of the results. His early
works included papers on the geology of
regions of southern England and an early
attempt to unravel the structural geology of
the Alps.
By the 1830’s, the pioneering work of
William Smith and his contemporaries was
being built upon and the paleontological-
based subdivisions of geological time were
being recognised as formal systems. It was
this “enterprise of stratigraphy” that The
Geological Society of London focussed
upon, aimed at bringing an order and
nomenclature to the diverse rocks of Britain
and the wider world.
The subdivision and correlation of that
which we now term older Paleozoic
remained perplexing. These often poorly
fossiliferous, slightly metamorphosed,
sediments as present beneath the Old Red
Sandstone in WaIes had been mapped as
“Transition rocks” or using the German
miners term “Grauwacke” (greywacke) and
their stratigraphic subdivision, correlation
and mapping was problematic. It was in
the unravelling of the stratigraphy of this
deep time that Murchison excelled in and
the periods Silurian, Devonian and Permian
were first recognised by him, although as
we shall see, not without controversy.
In 1831, Murchison set about examining
outcrops thought to lie below the Old
Red Sandstone in the Welsh Borderlands.