Murchison, Roderick Impey, Sir, 1792-1871

Sir Roderick Impey Murchison was born on February 19, 1792, in Tarradale, Ross-shire, Scotland.

He was a British geologist. He attended the Royal Military College, Great Marlow, and served in the British Army in Portugal and Spain (1808-1815). After two years of traveling in Europe with his wife, they settled in Barnard Castle, County Durham, England, in 1818. Murchison became fascinated by the young science of geology and joined the Geological Society of London in 1825, being elected its president in 1831. In 1826, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. He studied the geology of the south of England and later parts of southern France, northern Italy, and the Alps. He was an opponent of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. In 1831, he began his studies of the Early Paleozoic rocks in South Wales and his findings were embodied in the monumental work “The Silurian System” (1839). Following the establishment of the Silurian System, Murchison together with a British geologist Sedgwick founded the Devonian System, based on their research of the geology of southwestern England and the Rhineland. Murchison then went on an expedition to Russia and wrote, with others, “The Geology of Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains” (1845). In 1841, he proposed the establishment of the Permian System, based upon his Russian explorations. He was knighted in 1846, and in 1855, he was appointed Director-General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain and director of the Royal School of Mines and the Museum of Practical Geology, London. He prepared successive editions of his work “Siluria” (1854; 5th ed. 1872), which presented the main features of the original “Silurian System” together with information on new findings. In 1871, he founded a chair of geology and mineralogy at the University of Edinburgh, and in his will, he provided for the establishment of the Murchison Medal and Geological Fund, to be awarded annually by the Geological Society.

In 1815, he married Lady Charlotte Hugonin (1788–1869). He died on October 22, 1871, in London, England.