Sir Roderick Impey Murchison

Sir Roderick Impey Murchison , 1792-1871, British geologist. He served in the Napoleonic Wars but after the peace turned his attention to science. In the 1830s he undertook the investigation of previously undifferentiated rock strata in Wales and England; as a result of his researches he established the Silurian as a new geologic system and described it in The Silurian System (2 vol. in 1, 1839). With Adam Sedgwick he collaborated on the establishment of the Devonian system, and after carrying on an extended survey in Russia (1840-44) he also defined and named the Permian period . His last investigations were directed toward the geology of the Scottish Highlands. In 1846 he was knighted, and in 1855 he was appointed director-general of the Geological Survey of Great Britain. Murchison endowed a chair of geology and mineralogy at the Univ. of Edinburgh. He revised and modified the material of his earlier work in Siluria (1854) and collaborated on the Geology of Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains (1845).

Bibliography: See biography by Sir Archibald Geikie (2 vol., 1875).

Murchison, Sir Roderick (Impey) (1792–1871) In his day Roderick Impey Murchison was one of the foremost men of science in Europe. He was from a Scottish landowning family, and after serving in the Peninsular War he returned to Britain to the life of a country gentleman. In 1824, however, he settled in London to take up a vigorous interest in science. In 1825 he became a prominent member of the Geological Society and a year later was elected to the Royal Society. His private income enabled him to travel on geological excursions virtually every year, visiting much of Europe in pursuit of stratigraphical successions reaching further and further back in geological time.

He spent the next 40 years studying the Palaeozoic rocks of Britain and Europe and laying the foundation of the present stratigraphical column. From the Welsh Borderland he established the Silurian system (1835) and with Professor Adam Sedgwick of Cambridge he turned to south-west England to examine the thick succession of rocks from which H. T. De la Beche had recently obtained coal measure plant fossils. The result was the Devonian system (1840). Visits to Russia at the invitation of the Czar at this time led to the founding of the Permian system, based on his observations in Perm Province near the Urals. In the 1830s Murchison and Sedgwick found themselves in dispute about the base of the Silurian and over the years this developed into a bitter quarrel.

Relationships with De la Beche, who had become the head of the new Geological Survey were similarly strained, and Murchison now grew increasingly rigid and intolerant of scientific innovation. He was a founder of the Royal Geographical Society and a president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Knighted in 1846, he succeeded De la Beche as head of the Geological Survey in 1855. In 1866 he was created Baronet.

Murchison was a splendid example of the gentleman scientist. He did on occasion make serious mistakes, but in military fashion pressed on regardless.

D. L. Dineley

Murchison, Roderick Impey (1792–1871) A gentleman of private means who devoted much of his life to science, Murchison turned professional when he became director of the Geological Survey in 1855. His Silurian System (1839) was the first stratigraphic system defined by fossil content, rather than lithology. He helped clarify the Devonian System and, after a visit to Russia, the Permian.