Great Geologists | 61
Charles Lapworth
The University of Birmingham in the English Midlands houses
a small, but highly informative geology museum that was
shortlisted for the British Art Fund award, Museum of the Year
in 2017. The following quotation greets visitors: “The problems
geology proposes to solve are among the most attractive and
the most difficult that can engage the ingenuity of man.” These
inspiring words were written by Charles Lapworth in 1910, and
the museum is named after this Great Geologist.
Lapworth received no formal training in geology, but his
aptitude in the subject led him to contribute to solving two of
the greatest geological controversies of the later part of the
19th century — the so-called ‘Highlands Controversy’ and
the Cambrian–Silurian dispute. Moreover, he demonstrated
the utility of biostratigraphy in solving problems of structural
geology, pioneered the use of graptolites in stratigraphic
calibration and correlation and was a gifted teacher, who did
much to encourage women to engage in the science.
Charles Lapworth was born in 1842, in Faringdon, which is now
in Oxfordshire. In 1864, after training as a teacher at a college in
Culham near Abingdon, he moved to Galashiels in the Scottish
Borders to begin a career as a schoolmaster. Troubled by poor
health, Lapworth took up geology as an outdoor remedy.
He first sought fossils in the local area, but as he became
increasingly informed, he began an intensive study of the
Southern Uplands of Scotland in 1869.
Charles Lapworth, c. 1881. Photographer unknown.
The Southern Uplands, comprising an apparent great thickness
of ‘interminable greywackes,’ had proven a challenge for the
official Geological Survey to map, especially as they undertook
rapid reconnaissance traverses to create maps at a typical scale
of six inches to one mile. Lapworth took a different approach.
He mapped at a minute scale and utilized graptolites as index
fossils to characterize different strata. By doing so, he was able
to show that the stratigraphy of the region represented many
repeated slices, formed by what we would now understand as
thrust tectonics.
In 1875, Lapworth moved to St. Andrews to teach at Madras
College, but he continued his research. By 1878, the results
of his Southern Uplands investigations were published in a