1. John MacCulloch was the first geologist to be employed by the government in Britain and is best known for his pioneering texts on geology and for producing the first geological maps of Scotland.
16 Facts About John MacCulloch
1. 2.
John MacCulloch introduced the word "malaria" into the English language.
3.
John MacCulloch was born at the home of his mother's parents, grandfather James being a magistrate.
4.
John MacCulloch assisted ordnance chemist Cruickshank who taught at the Royal Military Academy and when Cruickshank was declared insane in 1804 took over his teaching position.
5.
John MacCulloch taught cadets at Addiscombe from 1814 and made use of his textbook A Geological Classification of Rocks.
6.
John MacCulloch was in 1809 to identify limestone suitable for use in gunpowder making.
7.
John MacCulloch was consulted on the suitability of the chief Scottish mountains for a repetition of the pendulum experiments previously conducted by Nevil Maskelyne and John Playfair at Schiehallion, and on the deviations of the plumb-line along the meridian of the Trigonometrical Survey.
8.
John MacCulloch formed a collection of the mineral productions and rocks of that country, which he presented to the Geological Society in 1814.
9.
John MacCulloch appears to have been for a time on the board of the Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature and the Arts, which was published at the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
10.
John MacCulloch was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1820.
11.
John MacCulloch continued to write papers, chiefly on the rocks and minerals of Scotland, and had at last gathered so large an amount of information that the government was prevailed upon in the year 1826 to employ him in the preparation of a geological map of Scotland.
12.
John MacCulloch completed the field-work in 1832, and in 1834 his map and memoir were ready for publication, but these were not issued until 1836, the year after he died.
13.
John MacCulloch studied marsh fevers or miasmas and introduced the word "malaria" into English in 1827 and examined its distribution from a topographical perspective.
14.
John MacCulloch married Louisa Margaretta White of Addiscombe and during his honeymoon in Cornwall he fell from a carriage and sustained multiple fractures to his right leg.
15.
John MacCulloch's leg was amputated and during this period he continued his researches and even guided the surgeons who treated him.
16.
John MacCulloch died in hospital a few days later and was buried at Gulval.