Great Geologists | 23
William Smith
Practical geologists make maps. Not just those
showing the rocks that occur at surface in a
region, but also depth maps, thickness maps,
paleogeographic maps, amplitude extraction maps
- we make all of these and many more besides
with pencils and paper or ever-increasingly in
2-D and 3-D software packages. The first major
effort at creating a geological map of a country
was undertaken by a practical geologist - William
Smith - who was engaged in surveying canal
routes in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
His masterpiece was the first geological map of
England and Wales published just over 200 years
ago. To create the map Smith needed to identify
and correlate strata and found that the fossil
content of sedimentary rocks was an ideal tool
for doing so. He was therefore a key pioneer in
biostratigraphy or practical paleontology.
Smith’s 1815 geological map of England, Wales and part of Scotland.
Smith was born in 1769 in the beautiful
Oxfordshire village of Churchill. In sight of the
Cotswold Hills and surrounded by fossiliferous
Jurassic rocks it is no surprise that he became
interested in geology from an early age. In
contrast to many notable scientists of the late
18th and early 19th centuries, Smith came neither
from a privileged background (he was the son of
the village blacksmith) nor was he a particularly
adept academic scholar. Instead, by the age of
18, he was engaged in learning to be a surveyor
– a practical discipline in which he excelled.
Economic developments in the late 18th century
provided ample opportunities for a talented
surveyor. The Enclosure Acts set about organising
the English countryside into the ordered network
of fields and hedgerows we know today and at
the same time the development of steam-driven
machinery provided a ready need for coal and for
canals to transport it and other goods. Smith was
a busy man and by 1791 he had moved to the
county of Somerset and was engaged in a study
of a working colliery to delimit its extent and to