16 Facts About Roderick Murchison

Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 1st Baronet was a Scottish geologist who served as director-general of the British Geological Survey from 1855 until his death in 1871.

Roderick Murchison is noted for investigating and describing the Silurian, Devonian and Permian systems.

Davy urged Roderick Murchison to turn his energy to science, after hearing that he wasted his time riding to hounds and shooting.

Roderick Murchison was an opponent of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Roderick Murchison opposed the transmutation of species and supported successive creation.

The establishment of the Silurian system was followed by that of the Devonian system, an investigation in which Roderick Murchison assisted, both in the south-west of England and in the Rhineland.

Roderick Murchison was accompanied by Edouard de Verneuil and Count Alexander von Keyserling, in conjunction with whom he produced a work on Russia and the Ural Mountains.

Roderick Murchison was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1840.

Roderick Murchison served on the Royal Commission on the British Museum.

Roderick Murchison announced the Permian system to geology in 1841, based on explorations in Perm Krai undertaken with Edouard de Verneuil.

Roderick Murchison was responsible for establishing much of the international prestige of British geology, and he viewed the spread of his stratigraphic systems on maps around the world "as a scientific form of imperial expansion".

In 1855 Roderick Murchison was appointed director-general of the British Geological Survey and director of the Royal School of Mines and the Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, London, in succession to Sir Henry De la Beche, who had been the first to hold these offices.

In 1857, Roderick Murchison was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society.

One of the closing public acts of Roderick Murchison's life was the founding of a chair of geology and mineralogy at the University of Edinburgh.

Roderick Murchison died in 1871 and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London, near the north end of the arcade on the west side of the central path.

Roderick Murchison Road is one of the streets in east London, and there is a Roderick Murchison Avenue in Old Bexley, southeast London.