Sedgwick and his trilobite

Abstract

Standing on guard at the entrance to the Palaeozoic section of the University of Cambridge’s Sedgwick Museum is a bronze statue of the man after whom the museum was named—the 7th Woodwardian Professor, the Reverend Adam Sedgwick. In one hand he holds his trusty geological hammer, in the other is a rock. Sedgwick, the man who unraveled many of the mysteries of the early Palaeozoic rocks of Wales, looks as if he has just cracked a piece of rock off an outcrop. Yet, rather incongruously, he is swathed in his academic gown—our man is clearly both the consummate field geologist and the academic.