Sir Archibald Geikie Research Articles

About this title - Aspects of the Life and Works of Archibald Geikie

Sir Archibald Geikie (1835–1924) was one of the most distinguished and influential geologists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was Director-General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, President of the Geological Society of London, President of the British Association, Trustee of the British Museum and President of the Royal Society. He was also an accomplished writer, a masterful lecturer and a talented artist who published over 200 scientific papers, books and articles. The papers in this volume examine aspects of Geikie's life and works, including his family history, his personal and professional relationships, his art, and his contributions as a field geologist and administrator. Together, they provide a deeper understanding of his life, his career and his contribution to the development of Geology as a scientific discipline. Much of the research is based on primary sources, including previously unpublished manuscripts, donated in part by members of the family to the Haslemere Educational Museum, UK.

The Geikie Archive at Haslemere Museum: family and professional material

Abstract The family history of Sir Archibald Geikie (1835–1924) is examined with reference to his immediate family and descendants, including much previously unpublished documentary archival material preserved at the Haslemere Educational Museum. The lives of Archibald's children are also examined. This account includes previously unpublished images of the Geikie family and gives new insights into aspects of Archibald Geikie's character through the memories of his grandson, Derick Jacob Behrens (1917–2004). Geikie's continued academic life after his retirement from the Geological Survey is discussed in relation to that institution.

The Geikie Archive at Haslemere Educational Museum

Abstract The extensive archive of papers, illustrations, albums and specimens accumulated by Sir Archibald Geikie and held by the Haslemere Educational Museum is a rich resource for any appreciation of his professional life and achievements. This paper charts the history of the archive, highlights some of its particular treasures and discusses the key series of records it contains.

A long life's relationship: Archibald Geikie, Alexander Macmillan and his publishing house

Abstract The relationship between Sir Archibald Geikie, his publisher Alexander Macmillan and Macmillan & Co began when Archibald was a young man of 23 and continued until his death in 1924. Correspondence and other sources reveal the development of an intimate relationship with Alexander, as well as others such as Norman Lockyer, editor of Nature from 1869 and responsible for Macmillan's science books. Archibald's relationship with Alexander was of mutual benefit and supportive, although this study shows that this was not without difficulties and some disagreement. It was a professional relationship, with both men wanting the best for their publications, but also a personal relationship as Alexander welcomed Archibald into his home. Through Alexander, Archibald widened his circle of acquaintances and met his wife, Anna Maria Alice Gabrielle Pignatel, and became linked in marriage when Alexander married her sister, Jeanne Barbe Emma. Through Macmillan's publications, Archibald gained an international audience as a communicator, pioneer historian of science and a successful writer of popular and readable textbooks.

Sir Archibald Geikie: the North American connections

Abstract Sir Archibald Geikie (1835–1924), one of the towering figures in the history of British geology, maintained a long professional relationship and correspondence with pioneering American geologists of the nineteenth century, including James Dwight Dana, Clarence Dutton, Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden and Grove Karl Gilbert. Geikie made two trips to the USA. Geikie's first trip, accompanied by his former student at Edinburgh Henry Drummond, took place in August–November 1879 for field excursions in the American ‘Far West’, including Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, where he could find ample evidence for the dominant role of fluvial erosion in the denudation of continents (a school of thought called ‘fluvialism’ or ‘erosionalism’). These geological excursions also resulted in nine articles by Geikie published during 1880–82 as well as a large number of landscape paintings and sketches now preserved at the Haslemere Educational Museum in England. Geikie's second trip from April to May 1897 was due to an invitation to deliver a series of lectures on ‘The Founders of Geology’ at Johns Hopkins University; these lectures became the basis for his classic book of the same title. Geikie kept an active interest in geological mapping and discoveries in the USA, as evident from his numerous references to American geology in his 1882 Text-book of Geology . Geikie's American connections demonstrate that geology, although primarily a field-based regional science, did not evolve in isolation in various countries during the nineteenth century, but that there was lively exchange and synergy in geological research and findings among geologists working in Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Before the Scottish Survey: Alfred Harker the Geologist

The archival papers of the eminent petrologist Alfred Harker span his entire geological career of over 60 years. These are held by the Archive of the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences (University of Cambridge). Harker was associated with the Department of Geology, the Woodwardian Museum and post-1904, the Sedgwick Memorial Museum. Importantly, his meticulously labelled notebooks provide an unprecedented insight into his development as a field and laboratory scientist. They chart Harker's beginnings as a fossil collector and observer of sedimentary stratigraphy on the North Yorkshire coast, his trips to Wales and Devon with the Sedgwick Club, and his later work in the English Lake District with his friend and colleague John. E. Marr. This paper examines in particular Harker's suite of 20 notebooks kept up until 1894, including his trip to Edinburgh in August 1892. This visit introduced the young scientist to the geology of Scotland for the first time. An overview of Harker's experience and contemporary contacts suggests some reasons why Sir Archibald Geikie later invited him to join the Scottish Survey staff in 1895.

Chapter 9 1896–9: Frustrations, further travel and publications

During 1896–7, Gregory became dissatisfied with the bleak prospects of promotion at the NHM. He had been an Assistant for 10 years, during which he had achieved a DSc, RGS and GSL awards, and a phenomenal output of nearly 80 publications, a number of which were monographs in their own right. He had also gained international recognition for his work, especially in the fields of palaeontology and East African geology. However, he was still only a Second Class Assistant and not the most senior (NHM archives), earning just over £200 a year with an uncertain prospect of promotion to a more senior position. Dr Henry Woodward, the Keeper, was due to retire at the end of 1901, when Dr A. Smith Woodward became Keeper, opening the position of Assistant Keeper, but besides Gregory there were other Assistants who were more senior having spent longer at the NHM. Bather (who in fact became Assistant Keeper) also had a very good claim on the post as by 1900 he too had a prolific publication record, with for instance, about 50 papers on the Echinoderms alone (Lang 1934). Gregory was not a man to hang about awaiting dead men's shoes, and his lack of an Oxbridge degree did not make an academic appointment certain. The Chair of Geology at Oxford was advertised on 10 November 1896; Gregory only decided to apply at the very last minute (27 January 1897), using Sir Archibald Geikie as a referee. It would, he thought, be a chance to re-organize the Oxford University Museum and also allow him to undertake more work on Palaeozoic rocks and fossils than he could at the NHM where, as an Assistant, he was still subject to direction. Initially he had decided not to apply because ‘I saw little chance of getting the …

Restoring maps and memoirs to four-dimensional space using virtual globe technology: a case study from the Scottish Highlands

Abstract Ben Peach and John Horne contributed to a revolution in the visualization of stratigraphy and structures using geological maps and cross-sections. In the century since their pioneering fieldwork, the analysis of map structures and the restoration of folds and faults in cross-sections have played a key role in enabling generations of structural geologists to develop theories of displacement and deformation in orogenic belts. However, classical printed maps have practical limitations. They are often inaccessible, they may be difficult to interpret and they are expensive to update when errors or new data come to light. Today, a new wave of the geological mapping revolution is in progress thanks to interactive geo-browsers such as Google Earth, which are opening up possibilities for tectonic visualization that were inconceivable only a decade ago. We discuss the digital deconstruction of classical geological maps of the British Isles and Ireland, such as those by William Smith, Sir Archibald Geikie, Ben Peach & John Horne, and others, and we demonstrate how Google Earth and Google SketchUp can turn the digitized versions of these maps into truly four-dimensional spatio-temporal visualizations.

Heredity and radium at Dublin. An impression of the British Association meeting.

The stimulating air of Dublin had a very visible effect on the British Association. The members were in great force, and among Associates were fewer of those very unattached camp-followers who enjoy not Science but the reputation which is bought cheaply at a guinea. The name of Darwin as well as the air of Dublin no doubt added impetus to the meeting. People wanted to hear about Darwin, and one of the mistakes of the week was that they were allowed to hear so little. No speech was more popular than the few words, very beautifully said and delivered, in which Sir Archibald Geikie explained how in his later years Charles Darwin found an encyclopaedia in his sons, getting mathematical and astronomical facts from George, botanical facts from Francis, financial and mechanical help from the others. It seems to many a mistake that the President, Mr. Francis Darwin, who has written delightfully on his father's life, held aloof from evolution. A big popular audience was longing to hear what this satisfying word, which can be safely used in the drawing-room, really meant. The President is a good Darwinian, a firm believer in the adequacy of natural selection, recently much out of favour with men of Science. Instead he plunged almost without an introduction into very difficult questions of cell development. The gist of the lecture was as severely handled by botanical critics as by the popular audience. Yet the contribution was original, and the short summing-up of his last paragraphs as plain and direct as, may one say, the concluding sentences of those inexplicable rigmaroles which so often made an hour's prelude to the decisive climax of Cromwell's speeches. It seems to me certain (said the President), that in development we have an actual instance of habit. If this is so, somatic inheritance must be a vera causa. Nor does it seem impossible that memory should role the plasmic link which connects successive generations--the true miracle of the camel passing through the eye of a needle--since, as I have tried to show, the reactions of living things to their surroundings exhibit in the plainest way the universal presence of a mnemonic factor. We may fix our eyes on phylogeny and regard the living world as a great chain of forms, each of which has learned something of which its predecessors were ignorant; or we may attend rather to ontogeny, where the lessons learned become in part automatic. But we must remember that the distinction between phylogeny and ontogeny is an artificial one, and that routine and acquisition are blended in life. This is at any rate a plain challenge to Weissmann, and what follows is an equally plain defence of natural selection. The great engine of natural selection is taunted nowadays, as it was fifty years ago, with being merely a negative power. I venture to think that the mnemonic hypothesis of evolution makes a positive value of natural selection more obvious. If evolution is a process of drilling organisms into habits, the elimination of those that cannot learn is an integral part of the process, and is no less real because it is carded out by a self-acting system. It is surely a positive gain to the harmony of the universe that the discordant strings should break. As I listened to the slow and unemotional delivery of this interesting and unorthodox address, it occurred to me how differently it would have impressed the audience if they could have been reminded of a delightful passage in Charles Darwin's autobiography, edited by the speaker. The simplicity of it makes it one of the great documents of the world, and this said address appears in the light of it as an incomparably Darwinian product. The passage is this: In 1880 I published, with Frank's assistance, our Power of Movement in Plants. This was a tough bit of work. The book bears much the same relation to my little book on climbing plants which Cross Fertilisation did to the Fertilisation of Orchids; for in accordance with the principle of evolution it was impossible to account for climbing plants having been developed in so many widely different groups unless all kinds of plants possess some power of movement of an analogous kind. …

Some youthful beliefs of sir Archibald Geikie, PRS, and the first publication of his ‘on the study of the sciences’

Summary Two documents written in his youth by the distinguished nineteenth-century British geologist Archibald Geikie have recently become available to historians. One is Geikie's ‘Journal’, written when he had recently been appointed to the Scottish Branch of the Geological Survey; the other is an essay ‘On the Study of the Sciences’, which is published here in full. The essay gives an indication of Geikie's early views on science and his thoughts about education. The ‘Journal’ reveals much about Geikie's youthful personal fears and goals, and his religious views. It appears that he was filled with religious zeal and piety when a young man, though as far as the evidence goes, this gave way to conventional religious observance in later life.

Sir Archibald Geikie (1835-1924) and the "Highlands Controversy": New Archival Sources for the History of British Geology in the Nineteenth Century

With the help of new archival material relating to Archibald Geikie, discovered fairly recently at the Haslemere Educational Museum, some revisions are offered to my account of the "Highlands Controversy" (relating to the structure of the Northwest Highlands of Scotland), published in 1990.1 Also further light is thrown on the so-called "Archaean Controversy," especially with regard to the debates about the rocks at St. David's, Pembrokeshire. It is shown that Geikie did visit the north coast of Scotland before 1884, but made no observations there that had a bearing on the Highlands Controversy. He was, however, well prepared for a change of mind before he actually examined the rocks at Loch Eriboll in 1884. It appears that Geikie's chief "bête noire" was the petrologist Thomas Bonney, and to a lesser extent Charles Callaway. Some new information about Edward Greenly is revealed, and also the procedures of the Wharton Committee which looked into the affairs of the Survey in 1900, and led to Geikie's retirement.

Sir Archibald Geikie (1835–1924), geologist, romantic aesthete, and historian of geology:

Summary The characteristics of inductivist historiography of science, as practised by earlier scientist/historians, and Whig historiography, as practised by earlier political historians, are described, according to the accounts of Agassi and Butterfield. It is suggested that the writings of Geikie on the history of geology allow us to characterize him as a Whig/inductivist historian of science who formulated anachronistic judgements. It is further suggested that his writings have had a considerable long-term effect on interpretations of the history of geology. The character of Geikie's historiography is related to his social, political and religious views, his historicism, and his romantic enthusiasm for Nature. His methodological pronouncements are examined: he believed that the present is the key to the past, and also that the past is the key to the present. He was an empiricist and inductivist. These epistemological and methodological views impinged on his historiography of science. If one attempts to ...

Humphrey Owen Jones, F. R. S. (1878-1912) chemist and mountaineer

Between February and August 1912, Humphrey Owen Jones, Fellow of Clare College and Jacksonian Demonstrator in Chemistry at Cambridge, received public recognition of his scientific work and great happiness in his private life. He was 34 years of age and in February 1912 was elected as the youngest F.R.S. of the time. At the end of July he was appointed to the Royal Commission on the use of oil-fuel by the Navy. On 1 August he was married in Bangor Cathedral to Muriel Gwendolen Edwards, Fellow of the University of Wales, who had done research with him. She was 26 years of age. In the middle of August, Dr and Mrs H. O. Jones were on their honeymoon in the Alps. Jones was an experienced mountaineer and his wife was also keen on climbing. On 15 August 1912 they set out with a guide (J. Truffer) to climb the Mont Rouge de Peuteret, a minor peak (2941 m.) on the south side of Mont Blanc. In an exposed position, the guide slipped, Jones was unable to arrest him with the rope, and all three fell to their deaths on the Fresnay Glacier, 300 m. below. Their grave is in Courmayeur. The tragedy was referred to briefly by Sir Archibald Geikie, P.R.S., in his Anniversary Address on 30 November 1912, but no extended obituary notice appeared under the auspices of the Royal Society. There were obituary notices in several journals and it was probably felt that these were sufficient, particularly since Jones had been an F.R.S. for only about six months. The centenary of his birth seems an appropriate occasion to remedy this omission, and to examine some of his contributions to chemistry, so prematurely terminated sixty-six years ago.

The Club of the Royal College of Physicians, the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers and their relationship to the Royal Society Club

FROM the Annals of the Royal Society Club by Sir Archibald Geikie, we learn that before the Royal Society was formed in 1660 ‘men of science were in the habit of assembling weekly for the purpose of discussing questions in physics and other parts of human learning, . . . in some tavern, particularly The Bull Head’. In the early years of the Society, Fellows frequently went to eat in nearby taverns after the meeting o f the Society, as Pepys records in 1665 and 1666, or dined together in groups before going to the Society as Evelyn records in the 1680’s, and one of these groups was referred to as ‘a Club of our Society’ (1). Forty years later Dr Martin Folkes, the Vice-President of the Royal Society, collected a group of men around him, nearly all Fellows, on a Tuesday evening for supper, and in John Byrom s diaries (1) there are records of these meetings of a Club ‘of the Royal Society men’ which over a period of twenty years name fifty-five Fellows as members. Even whilst this Club was meeting on Tuesday evenings there is evidence that around 1730, Fellows were dining with Halley, the Astronomer Royal, before going on to the Society’s meetings, and by 1736 there began the Club of the Royal Philosophers, later known as the Royal Society Club, which has an almost complete written record from 1743. Most of the members of this Club were Fellows even in the earliest days, and the names of all guests are known, sometimes with an indication of which member of the Club had invited them. The Club met almost every Thursday for a century and later on it met on days when the Royal Society met.

Towards an Historiography of Science. Joseph Agassi

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsTowards an Historiography of Science. Joseph Agassi Charles C. GillispieCharles C. Gillispie Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 55, Number 1Mar., 1964 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/349805 Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1964 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:D.R. Oldroyd Sir Archibald Geikie (1835–1924), geologist, romantic aesthete, and historian of geology:, Annals of Science 37, no.44 (Aug 2006): 441–462.https://doi.org/10.1080/00033798000200351

Virgil's Garden of Flowers and his Philosophy of Nature

In his charming essay on ‘Jardins d'Humanité’ Pierre Grimal says that gardens are inseparable from the humanism of Europe; ‘the groves were God's first temples’, wrote the poet Bryant; and there is abundant testimony to these statements in classical antiquity. Sir Archibald Geikie, who, like Sir D'Arcy Thompson, belonged to those grand old Scottish scientists who added to their science a deep humanism, Geikie from whose books I learned geology forty years ago, wrote:From the infancy of mankind, trees have been regarded with mingled feelings of admiration and awe. The combined majesty and grace wherewith they tower above the soil that supports them; their infinite variety of individual forms and colours, whether carrying their foliage all the year or at one season clothing themselves with tender leaf and blossom, at another flaming in the varied glories of autumn, and, thereafter, bare and leafless, stretching their giant arms and delicate branches to all the winds of heaven; their immemorial age; their calm endurance and seeming defiance of the vicissitudes of time, in pathetic contrast to the short and troubled span of human life; their varied music under the changeful moods of the weather, from the faint whisper awakened by the gentlest breath of summer to the loud roar or moaning wail aroused by the fury of a wintry tempest; the grateful shelter which under their canopy of leafy boughs they provide for man and beast; the endless services which they render to man's daily life in their yield of timber or leaves or fruit—these features give to trees a high place among the charms and bounties wherewith Nature teems.

Hutton on Arran

In 1899 Sir Archibald Geikie edited and published the third volume of Hutton's Theory of the Earth. The two earlier volumes had been published as far back as 1795. In his preface Sir A. Geikie gives the history of the MS. from which the present volume was printed; and he provides at the end of the work not only an index of Vol. III, but also, and separately, a most valuable index of the two earlier volumes, in which we note three references to Arran. In Vol. Ill, however, the last and longest chapter is devoted to “An Examination of the Mineral History of the Island of Arran” (pp. 191–267).

The Beauties of Scenery

THE scientific study of scenery, which owed so much to Sir Archibald Geikie, Lord Avebury, and later to J. E. Marr, has benefited greatly in recent years from the writings of Dr. Vaughan Cornish. He has not only devoted himself to the problems of the preservation of scenery and to the related question of national parks, but has sought also for a new approach to the appreciation of scenery. He has endeavoured to develop an analytic study of beauty in scenery, and in this new book he has sought to provide a manual on this subject, which he hopes may be useful as a basis "for education in scenic amenity in preparation for the re-planning of town and country". The Beauties of Scenery A Geographical Survey. By Dr. Vaughan Cornish. Pp. 128 + 16 plates. (London: Frederick Muller, Ltd., 1943.) 6s. net.

The geology of Helvellyn and the southern part of Thirlmere

Since the official examination by the Geological Survey in the seventies of the nineteenth century, more recent work on various portions of the Lake District, carried out by Mr. E. E. Walker, Mr. J. F. N. Green, the late Professor Marr, Dr. G. H. Mitchell, and the present author, has shown that acid rocks are widespread throughout the area and, as foreseen by Sir Archibald Geikie, that their outcrops furnish important facts which any interpretation of the structure of the district, to be convincing, must explain. The original object of the present communication was to describe the development of this type of rock in the neighbourhood of Helvellyn, an area which, since the time of Clifton Ward and J. J. H. Teall, has received only passing and incidental mention. As the work progressed, however, it was found necessary to extend the investigation and to include the mapping and description of the whole of the Borrowdale Volcanic Series as found in this particular area. J. C. Ward, who described the Helvellyn range very thoroughly, fully recognized that an unusual type of rock was present in this locality. He discussed it in detail in his memoir (1876, p. 24), but, led astray by his views as to its metamorphic origin, he failed to map it in detail. He made no attempt to separate these flows of acid lava, but included them with other rocks on the one-inch map, indicating them by a symbol representing “mostly altered ash”. This vital omission excludes from

(1) The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences (2) A Source Book in Geology

IT is now more than thirty years since a comprehensive treatise on the history of geology has appeared in the English language. For long Sir Archibald Geikie's admirable “Founders of Geology” and von Zittel's “History of Geology and Palaeontology”have been the standard and, in fact, almost the only works exclusively devoted to this subject available for students. Since they were written, fresh studies in the history of geology have appeared from time to time, both in Europe and the United States. These have generally been of a more or less specialized character, and they have by no means exhausted the scope for further research. The appearance of two important new books on this subject is therefore a matter of considerable interest, particularly because both the original German edition of Zittel and the English translation by Mrs. Qgilvie-Gordon have long been out of print. (1) The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences By Dr. Frank Dawson Adams. Pp. v + 506 + 14 plates. (London: Bailliere, Tindall and Cox, 1939.) 22s. 6d. (2) A Source Book in Geology By Prof. Kirtley F. Mather Dr. Shirley L. Mason. (Source Books in the History of the Sciences Series.) Pp. xxii + 702. (New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1939.) 30s.