William Buckland

William Buckland 1784-1856, English geologist. He was dean of Westminster from 1845. First to note in England the action of glacial ice on rocks, he did much to bring physical and natural science into high repute and was responsible for giving Oxford (where he was a student and later a fellow) an international name in science. He wrote Reliquiae Diluvianae (1823) and Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (1836). Francis T. Buckland, English surgeon and naturalist, was his son.

Buckland, William (1784–1856) Fossils fascinated William Buckland, even as a child in Dorset, England. At Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1809 he was both ordained and elected Fellow. He was then made Reader in Mineralogy and elected to the Geological Society in 1813. Buckland's interests in fossils led him to study both vertebrates, especially mammals, and invertebrates, particularly molluscs. The vertebrates were an interest he had in common with the anatomist Baron Cuvier whom he visited in Paris several times.

In his study of Quaternary cave faunas he regarded a knowledge of the living representatives of the fossils as of great importance. His researches included the origins of the caves and the various deposits they contained, and the nature of flood and river deposits. As a churchman he contributed to the debate about the Noachian flood, without identifying it specifically in the superficial deposits he examined. He did, however, hold that there had been great inundations in prehistoric times which had spread the ‘diluvium’ far and wide. He was a plutonist and something of a catastrophist, since he believed that sudden great events had recently occurred to remove the fauna seen in the deposits we now know as of Pleistocene age. He was not opposed to Louis Agassiz's theory of an ice age and the previous great spread of glaciers. In fact, he described glacial deposits and glacially smoothed rock surfaces to the Geological Society when there was still much doubt about the former extent of highland ice.

Buckland's contribution to geology was not so much in the discoveries he made as in his attempt to redefine nature and in his methods of geological explanation. He was instrumental in establishing the Museum of Practical Geology in London. In 1845 Buckland was appointed Dean of Westminster, and thereafter was no longer able to devote time to geology.

D. L. Dineley

Bibliography

Rupke, N. A. (1983) The great chain of history. William Buckland and the English School of Geology (1814–1845). Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Buckland, William (1784–1856) The first reader in Geology and Mineralogy at the University of Oxford, Buckland was appointed Dean of Westminster in 1846. He developed the English school of historical geology with its emphasis on the progressive (but not evolutionary) nature of Earth history. Initially, he was a diluvialist and his Reliquiae Diluvianae (1823) is based on studies of fossil deposits in Kirkdale Cavern and other caves. He subsequently abandoned diluvialism in favour of Agassiz's glacial theory which he was the first to introduce into British geology. Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise (1836) was not only an attempt to reconcile geology and natural theology but also an up-to-date manual of historical geology. See also CATASTROPHISM.