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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: SIV-SOU |
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SMITH, WILLIAM (1769-1839) , English geologist, appropriately termed " the Father of English geology," and known among his acquaintances as " Strata Smith," was born at Churchill in Oxfordshire on the 23rd of March 1767. Deprived of his father, an ingenious mechanic, before he was eight years old, he depended upon his father's eldest brother, a farmer at Over Norton, who was but little pleased with his nephew's love of collecting " pundibs " (Terebratulae) and " pound-stones " (the large Echinoid Clypeus, then frequently employed as a pound weight by dairywomen), and with his propensity for carving sundials on soft brown " oven-stone " of his neighbour-hood. The uncle was, however, better satisfied when the boy, after studying the rudiments of geometry and surveying, began to take interest
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On being appointed engineer to the canal in 1794 he was deputed to make 'a tour of observation with regard to inland navigation. During this tour, which occupied nearly two months, he journeyed to York
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At this time he made acquaintance with the Rev. Benjamin Richardson (d. 1832), from .1796 rector of Farleigh Hungerford, who possessed a good collection of local fossils, but knew nothing of the laws of stratification. He had a sound knowledge of natural history, and he greatly aided Smith in learning the names and true nature of the fossils, while Smith arranged his specimens in the order of the strata. By this new friend Smith was introduced to the Rev. Joseph Townsend (i738-1816), rector of Pewsey, and on a notable occasion in 1799 Smith dictated his first table of British Strata, written by Richardson and now in the possession of the Geological Society of London. It was headed Order of the Strata, and their imbedded Organic Remains, in the neighbourhood of Bath; examined and proved prior to 1799. In 1813 Townsend published, with due acknowledgment, much information on the English strata communicated by William Smith, in a work entitled The Character of Moses established for veracity Its an historian, recording events from the Creation to the Deluge. Meanwhile Smith was completing and arranging the data for his large Geological Map of England and Wales, with part of Scotland, which appeared in 1815, in fifteen sheets, engraved on a scale of 5 m. to in. The map was reduced to smaller form in 1819; and from this date to 1822 twenty-one separate county geological maps and several sheets of sections were published in successive years, the whole constituting a Geological Atlas of England and Wales. Smith's collection of fossils was purchased in 1816-r818 by the British Museum. In 1817 a portion of the descriptive catalogue was published under the title of a Stratigraphical System of Organized Fossils. Prior to this, in 1816, he commenced the publication of Strata Identified by Organized Fossils, with figures printed on paper to correspond in some degree with the natural hue of the sirata. In this work (of which only four parts were published, 1816-1817) is exemplified the great principle he established of the identification of strata by their included organic remains. In January 1831 the Geological Society of London conferred on Smith the first Wollaston medal; on which occasion Sedgwick in an eloquent address referred to Smith as " the Father of English Geology "; and the government conferred upon him a' life-pension of loo per annum. The degree of LL.D. he received from Dublin, at the meeting of the British Association in that city in 1835. In 1838 he was appointed one of the commissioners to select building-stone for the new Houses of Parliament. The last years of his life were spent at Hackness (of which he made a good geological map), near Scarborough, and in the latter town. His usually robust health failed in 1839, and on 28th August of that year he died at Northampton. He was buried at St Peter's church, and a bust by Chantrey was placed in the nave. In 1891 the earl
His Memoirs, edited by his nephew, John Phillips, appeared in 1844. End of Article: SMITH, WILLIAM (1769-1839) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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