William Smith (geologist)

See also: William Smith

William Smith , known as Strata Smith , (March 23rd 1769 - August 28th 1839) is a British geologist . Its more famous work is The Great Map , a detailed geological map of the England, Wales and of part of the Scotland.

Smith is recognized as being the creator of the first Geological map of the Great Britain and the Père of the English Géologie , title which Adam Sedgwick gives him. However the recognition of its pars is long to come. Its work is initially plagiarized, Smith is financially ruined and spends time in prison for debts. The practitioners manners of this new science which is the geology and the founders of the learned societies of geology ignore this character resulting from a modest milieu. It is only later in its life that it is rewarded for its efforts.

Smith is born with Churchill in the Oxfordshire. He receives a rudimentary education but he has already a spirit curious about all and takes notes on what he observes, in particular in geology. In 1787 he becomes assistant of Edward Webb a geometrician. He studies quickly and becomes qualified in this work. In 1791 it goes in the Somerset to evaluate a property . There remain eight years there, working initially for Web then for the Somerset Coal Canal Company .

Smith works on the domaine of one of the oldest mines, the Mearns Pit with High Littleton. Whereas it observes the layers, it carries out that the layers are in the same relative positions. Moreover it notes that each layer can be identified by the Fossile S which it contains. This gives to Smith an assumption on the succession of the fauna which it can begin to check: are the relations between the layers and their characteristics identical in all England? During its voyages, initially as geometrician employed by John Disavows until in 1799 or he is laid off, it cartography sites of the stratigraphic layers. From these voyages its nickname Strata Smith comes to him.

In 1799 Smith produces the first detailed geological map of the surroundings of Bath.

In 1815 appears off has Geological Map England and Wales and Part off Scotland more known under the name of the Great Map , a chart of approximately two meters out of three drawn to 400 specimens of which a hundred still exists. The level of details and the extent of the roofed-in area are without precedent. In 1816 it publishes has off Geological Table Organized Fossils (), one of the first premises of the geological time scale. Smith is probably the first to understand that the layers and their fossils are in a natural order identical to the local level, national and beyond. The principle of superposition, that a layer deposited on another is more recent, is already known since the end of the 17th century but is not then regarded as really significant.

Although this chart is received, Smith does not benefit from it. A rival chart, largely copied his, is published by the scholars of the Geological Society off London, in particular by George Bellas, and sold with a price much low but they sell of it only few copies them too. The Large chart is not the first work in this kind. Georges Vat and Alexandre Brongniart publishes a chart of this style in 1808 but which relates to only the Paris basin, and covers less fiftieth surface of the chart of Smith. Moreover fossils are used by the authors less systematically and they present only cases of horizontally aligned layers.

After this chart, Smith produces charts even more detailed counties of England, for example that the area of Oxford (). 27 projected charts out of the 60 are published.

The August 31st 1819 Smith leaves prison, or he is imprisoned for debts. He turns over at his place to find an usher with his seized door and his house and his field.

In January 1831, the Geological Society off London confers to him the first Médaille Wollaston. On this occasion Adam Sedgwick known as of him “ If, by our linked efforts, we engraved the ornaments of this science and slowly it raised with the pinnacle of one of the temples of nature, it is him which gave the plans, established the foundations and set up of them the first solid walls by the labor not assisted of its hands ”. Smith travels to Dublin in 1835 or it receives off the rank of Doctor Laws of the Trinity College. He dies in Northampton in 1839 and is buried with some steps of the western tower of the church St Peter to Marefair.

A crater on Mars received its name.

External bonds

The great map

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