The Making of the Geological Society of London
Founded in 1807, the Geological Society of London became the world’s first learned society devoted to the Earth sciences. In celebration of the Society’s 200-year history, this book commemorates the lives of the Society’s 13 founders and sets geology in its national and European context at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Continental Tectonics and Mountain Building: The Legacy of Peach and Horne
The world’s mountain ranges are the clearest manifestations of long-term deformation of the continental crust. As such they have attracted geological investigations for centuries. Throughout this long history of research a few keynote publications stand out. One of the most important is the Geological Survey’s 1907 Memoir on The Geological Structure of the North-West Highlands of Scotland.
Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Saurians: A Historical Perspective
The papers in this collection go beyond the familiar tales about famous ‘fossil hunters’ and focus on relatively little-known episodes in the discovery and interpretation (from both a scientific and an artistic point of view) of dinosaurs and other inhabitants of the Mesozoic world.
The Life and Work of Professor J.W. Gregory FRS (1864-1932): Geologist, Writer and Explorer
>Gregory’s remarkable career and his scientific work are detailed and critically assessed. Accounts of his heroic 1893 expedition to the Rift Valley (a term he coined) in Kenya (now the Gregory Rift), his first crossing of Spitzbergen, and his resignation as Leader of the first British Antarctic Expedition of 1901, when racing to the Pole under Scott became the priority, draw on unpublished letters.
Military Aspects of Hydrogeology
This book contains 20 papers from authors in the UK, USA, Germany and Austria. Historically, it gives examples of the influence of groundwater on battlefield tactics and fortress construction; describes how groundwater was developed for water supply and overcome as an obstacle to military engineering and cross-country vehicular movement by both sides in World Wars I and II; and culminates with examples of the application of hydrogeology to site boreholes in recent conflicts, notably in Afghanistan.
Revisiting Ardnamurchan
In 1930 James Richey and Herbert Thomas, working for the British Geological Survey, completed their mapping of Ardnamurchan, one of four extinct volcanoes on Scotland’s northwest coast that mark the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean 60 million years ago. Their meticulous work revealed that indeed it was an ancient volcano, with the famous […]
Geological Society Founders’ Day Lecture
This year Dr Cherry Lewis, HoGG committee member, will give the Geological Society’s Founders’ Day Lecture. Hogg members can attend the lecture free of charge. Her talk entitled James Parkinson and the Founding of the Geological Society will be held at The Geological Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly on Wednesday 13 November, 2013. 17.30 Tea & coffee 18.00 Lecture […]
The Evolution of Creationism
In a recent issue of GSAToday Dave Montgomery of Seattle has written an excellent short account of the history of Creationism. Following all recent scholars like Ron Numbers he traces the roots of Young Earth Creationists (YEC) to about 1900 in the Seventh Day Adventist church, rather than presenting the view that it is a […]
William Boyd Dawkins, geologist & cave hunter
As part of Manchester’s Science Festival, HOGG Secretary, Leucha Veneer, will be giving a talk on the curator and cave hunter, William Boyd Dawkins (1837-1929). Boyd Dawkins found and recorded tools from Neolithic and Bronze Age man in the caves of Cresswell Crags, a limestone gorge honeycombed with caves. Using his knowledge of geology from […]
Hugh Torrens wins IUGS Tikhomirov award
Emeritus Professor Hugh Torrens has been awarded the inaugural V. V. Tikhomirov Award for the History of Geology. The Award is one of the new IUGS Scientific Awards of Excellence which have recently been established to reward outstanding original contributions or achievements that mark a major advance or contribution to the Earth Sciences. Each IUGS […]