George Bellas Greenough
Encyclopedia
George Bellas Greenough FRS (18 January 1778 – 2 April 1855), an English geologist
, was born in London
.
and some real estate in Surrey. His mother was the only daughter of the apothecary Thomas Greenough, whose very successful business was located on Ludgate Hill near to St Paul's. A younger brother died in infancy.
At the age of six he was orphaned with his father dying first, and the cause, recorded by Greenough in a biographical sketch, was ‘By neglect of business, by carelessness, extravagance, dissipation and by party zeal, my father’s fortune was soon squandered away—family dissention followed; his constitution was broken, his prospects blighted and he died of decline at Clifton in 1784’. His mother followed only a few months later.
He was adopted by his maternal grandfather, who had made a fortune through selling popular preparations, the most popular of which were “Pectoral Lozenge from Balsam of Tolu”, for coughs and colds, and various tinctures for cleaning teeth and gums and curing tooth ache.
His grandfather sent him to Mr Cotton's school at Salthill near Slough and then to Eton at the age of ten. He stayed there only one year, suggesting he was perhaps too delicate a child for the robust life at the boarding schools of the day. In September 1789 he entered Dr Thompson's school at Kensington where he studied for the next six years. Whilst he was at school he took the name Greenough at the request of his grandfather.
He left school in 1795 and went up to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge to study law for three years, but he did not take a degree.
In September 1798 he went to the University of Göttingen to continue his legal studies, thinking that the lectures would be in Latin, but found instead they were all in German. In order to improve his language skills Greenough attended the lectures of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
on natural history and these inspired a passion for mineralogy and geology. At Göttingen Samuel Coleridge
was one of his closer friends.
In 1799 Greenough made at least two tours of the Harz
; one in the Easter vacation with Clement Carlyon and Charles and Frederic Parry; and the other in the late summer with Carlyon and Coledridge. These tours were mainly to collect minerals, but he also studied geological collections in the towns he visited.
In 1801 Greenough returned to England and his interest in geology deepened when he toured England with Carlyon and met Humphry Davy
in Penzance. Later he attended Davy's lectures at the Royal Institution
in London.
The following year he travelled to France and Italy and 'noted what I saw of geology on my way'. In 1805 he went on a geological tour of Scotland with James Skene in 1805, and of Ireland with Davy in 1806. On the Ireland tour he also made a study of social conditions which aroused a deep interest in political questions.
1807 was a significant year for Greenough. He was elected member of parliament for the borough of Gatton
, continuing to hold this seat until 1812, although Hansard does not record he made any contributions to the House. In this year his interest in science in general, and geology in particular, increased : he joined a number of eminent scientific and cultural societies and he was elected fellow of the Royal Society
. He also became associated with a group of mineralogists to which Davy referred in a letter to William Pepys, dated 13 November 1807, when he said 'We are forming a little talking Geological Club'. This club rapidly developed into a learned society devoted to geology and Greenough became the chief founder with others of the Geological Society of London
. He was the first chairman of that Society, and in 1811, when it was more regularly constituted, he was the first president
. In this capacity he served on two subsequent occasions, and did much to promote the advancement of geology.
During the time he helped to found and forge the Geological Society Greenough served in the militia in the Light Horse Volunteers of London and Westminster. This was a corps of volunteers, originated by a group of city businessmen, and rather than being paid for their services members had to pay to join and maintain an annual subscription. The unit has an obligation to be called out in support of the civil power when necessary. It was rather different to other regiments in organising itself democratically through a committee. All prospective members had to be proposed by one of the committee and if admitted all served as private soldiers, with officers elected by ballot. Greenough enlisted as a private soldier in 1803, but in 1808 he was elected a commissioned officer with the rank of Lieutenant and he served for the next 11 years. Greenough resigned his commission in 1819 as a matter of principle following the Peterloo massacre in Manchester, which he regarded as an abuse of military power for political ends. He published his resignation letters in The Morning Chronicle and The Times. Clearly, Greenough was a man of conscience.
In 1819 he published A Critical Examination of the First Principles of Geology, a work which was useful mainly in refuting erroneous theories. In the same year was published his famous Geological Map of England and Wales, in six sheets; of which a second edition was issued in 1839 and a third edition in 1865. This map was the culmination of a major cooperative project of the early Geological Society, who had established a Committee of Maps in April 1809. led by Greenough. Members of the society out in the provinces of England and Wales submitted details of local rocks and strata which were collated by Greenough, entered in his notebooks and plotted on a topographical map. Greenough was an inductivist
in the Baconian
tradition, so he eschewed 'theory' and systematically collected information and details with the aim of discovering the distribution of rocks. Greenough received assistance in the collection of his geological facts chiefly from William Buckland
, Reverend W. D. Conybeare
, Henry Warburton
, and Thomas Webster
, and amongst others from Henry Thomas De la Beche
, John Farey
, the Rev. J. Hailstone
, David Mushet
, Thomas Biddle and Arthur Aikin
.
A first draft of the geological map was presented to the Geological Society as early as 1812 but there was dissatisfaction with the quality of the engraving of the topographical map, resulting in the base map not being ready until 1814. In 1815 William Smith William Smith
published his famous geological map and when Greenough finally published his map five years later it was clear he was heavily indebted to Smith's work in delineating strata (although not acknowledged until the 1865 edition); nevertheless Greenough's map contained more geological detail and was better cartographically. Smith had relied on a theory about the linear arrangement of strata identified by characteristic fossils to extrapolate from his observations (Smith himself was indebted to John Strachey
's theory of strata for his ideas), and so was able to map out the distribution of strata across the country. Greenough, on the other hand, did not go by theory, and it was probably this aversion that delayed the preparation of his map.
It has been claimed that Greenough and the Geological Society failed to work with William Smith in the production of a geological map due to snobbishness, but Rachel Lauden argues that a more compelling reason is that Greenough did not consider that fossils could reveal anything about the nature of rocks. Greenough considered that fossils had been very over-rated in their usefulness, as fossil species were different from modern species, so fossils could not be used to 'theorise' about or deduce the relative age and the conditions of deposition of the rocks. Indeed, he was suspicious of the concepts of 'stratum and 'formation, much used by Smith.
For this reason Greenough wanted to dissociate himself and the Geological Society map from the man who was using fossils to identify strata. Seemingly, Greenough had intellectual reasons rather than primarily social reasons for not collaborating with Smith. Both maps maps now hang side by side on the main staircase in the entrance hall of The Geological Society apartments in Burlington House, London.
In 1843 he started to prepare a geological Map of British India
. In 1852 he produced a series of maps of Hindustan
, mainly hydrographical
, defining all the important elements of the ten water basins of the Indian Peninsula (for the Asiatic Society
), and in 1854 a large-scale geological map of the whole of British India, published as a ‘General Sketch of the Physical and Geological Features of British India. Greenough never visited India but much as he had done for his earlier maps of England and Wales, he compiled his map from scraps of information gathered from many observations of individuals recorded in scattered sources, demonstrating one of Greenough's key strengths—his assiduous ability to collect and collate information for his empirical cause.
Greenough died at Naples
on 2 April 1855. He is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, North London.
He bequeathed his fossil collection to the Geology Department at University College London
(UCL) and his notebooks are in the Greenough Papers collection held at UCL Library. The student geological society at UCL is named after Greenough.
Geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...
, was born in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Biography
Greenough was born George Bellas, named after his father, George Bellas, who had a profitable business in the legal profession as a proctor in Doctor's Commons, St Paul's Churchyard Doctors' CommonsDoctors' Commons
Doctors' Commons, also called the College of Civilians, was a society of lawyers practising civil law in London. Like the Inns of Court of the common lawyers, the society had buildings with rooms where its members lived and worked, and a large library...
and some real estate in Surrey. His mother was the only daughter of the apothecary Thomas Greenough, whose very successful business was located on Ludgate Hill near to St Paul's. A younger brother died in infancy.
At the age of six he was orphaned with his father dying first, and the cause, recorded by Greenough in a biographical sketch, was ‘By neglect of business, by carelessness, extravagance, dissipation and by party zeal, my father’s fortune was soon squandered away—family dissention followed; his constitution was broken, his prospects blighted and he died of decline at Clifton in 1784’. His mother followed only a few months later.
He was adopted by his maternal grandfather, who had made a fortune through selling popular preparations, the most popular of which were “Pectoral Lozenge from Balsam of Tolu”, for coughs and colds, and various tinctures for cleaning teeth and gums and curing tooth ache.
His grandfather sent him to Mr Cotton's school at Salthill near Slough and then to Eton at the age of ten. He stayed there only one year, suggesting he was perhaps too delicate a child for the robust life at the boarding schools of the day. In September 1789 he entered Dr Thompson's school at Kensington where he studied for the next six years. Whilst he was at school he took the name Greenough at the request of his grandfather.
He left school in 1795 and went up to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge to study law for three years, but he did not take a degree.
In September 1798 he went to the University of Göttingen to continue his legal studies, thinking that the lectures would be in Latin, but found instead they were all in German. In order to improve his language skills Greenough attended the lectures of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was a German physician, physiologist and anthropologist, one of the first to explore the study of mankind as an aspect of natural history, whose teachings in comparative anatomy were applied to classification of what he called human races, of which he determined...
on natural history and these inspired a passion for mineralogy and geology. At Göttingen Samuel Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
was one of his closer friends.
In 1799 Greenough made at least two tours of the Harz
Harz
The Harz is the highest mountain range in northern Germany and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The name Harz derives from the Middle High German word Hardt or Hart , latinized as Hercynia. The legendary Brocken is the highest summit in the Harz...
; one in the Easter vacation with Clement Carlyon and Charles and Frederic Parry; and the other in the late summer with Carlyon and Coledridge. These tours were mainly to collect minerals, but he also studied geological collections in the towns he visited.
In 1801 Greenough returned to England and his interest in geology deepened when he toured England with Carlyon and met Humphry Davy
Humphry Davy
Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet FRS MRIA was a British chemist and inventor. He is probably best remembered today for his discoveries of several alkali and alkaline earth metals, as well as contributions to the discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine...
in Penzance. Later he attended Davy's lectures at the Royal Institution
Royal Institution
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization devoted to scientific education and research, based in London.-Overview:...
in London.
The following year he travelled to France and Italy and 'noted what I saw of geology on my way'. In 1805 he went on a geological tour of Scotland with James Skene in 1805, and of Ireland with Davy in 1806. On the Ireland tour he also made a study of social conditions which aroused a deep interest in political questions.
1807 was a significant year for Greenough. He was elected member of parliament for the borough of Gatton
Gatton
Gatton may refer to:Places:*Gatton, Queensland, Australia**Shire of Gatton, former administrative region*Gatton, Surrey, former village in England** Gatton , rotten borough based in the villagePeople:...
, continuing to hold this seat until 1812, although Hansard does not record he made any contributions to the House. In this year his interest in science in general, and geology in particular, increased : he joined a number of eminent scientific and cultural societies and he was elected fellow of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
. He also became associated with a group of mineralogists to which Davy referred in a letter to William Pepys, dated 13 November 1807, when he said 'We are forming a little talking Geological Club'. This club rapidly developed into a learned society devoted to geology and Greenough became the chief founder with others of the Geological Society of London
Geological Society of London
The Geological Society of London is a learned society based in the United Kingdom with the aim of "investigating the mineral structure of the Earth"...
. He was the first chairman of that Society, and in 1811, when it was more regularly constituted, he was the first president
President of the Geological Society of London
The President of the Geological Society of London is the President of the Geological Society of London.- List of presidents :* 1807 - 1813 George Bellas Greenough* 1813 - 1815 Henry Grey Bennet* 1815 - 1816 William Blake* 1816 - 1818 John MacCulloch...
. In this capacity he served on two subsequent occasions, and did much to promote the advancement of geology.
During the time he helped to found and forge the Geological Society Greenough served in the militia in the Light Horse Volunteers of London and Westminster. This was a corps of volunteers, originated by a group of city businessmen, and rather than being paid for their services members had to pay to join and maintain an annual subscription. The unit has an obligation to be called out in support of the civil power when necessary. It was rather different to other regiments in organising itself democratically through a committee. All prospective members had to be proposed by one of the committee and if admitted all served as private soldiers, with officers elected by ballot. Greenough enlisted as a private soldier in 1803, but in 1808 he was elected a commissioned officer with the rank of Lieutenant and he served for the next 11 years. Greenough resigned his commission in 1819 as a matter of principle following the Peterloo massacre in Manchester, which he regarded as an abuse of military power for political ends. He published his resignation letters in The Morning Chronicle and The Times. Clearly, Greenough was a man of conscience.
In 1819 he published A Critical Examination of the First Principles of Geology, a work which was useful mainly in refuting erroneous theories. In the same year was published his famous Geological Map of England and Wales, in six sheets; of which a second edition was issued in 1839 and a third edition in 1865. This map was the culmination of a major cooperative project of the early Geological Society, who had established a Committee of Maps in April 1809. led by Greenough. Members of the society out in the provinces of England and Wales submitted details of local rocks and strata which were collated by Greenough, entered in his notebooks and plotted on a topographical map. Greenough was an inductivist
Inductive reasoning
Inductive reasoning, also known as induction or inductive logic, is a kind of reasoning that constructs or evaluates propositions that are abstractions of observations. It is commonly construed as a form of reasoning that makes generalizations based on individual instances...
in the Baconian
Baconian method
The Baconian method is the investigative method developed by Sir Francis Bacon. The method was put forward in Bacon's book Novum Organum , or 'New Method', and was supposed to replace the methods put forward in Aristotle's Organon...
tradition, so he eschewed 'theory' and systematically collected information and details with the aim of discovering the distribution of rocks. Greenough received assistance in the collection of his geological facts chiefly from William Buckland
William Buckland
The Very Rev. Dr William Buckland DD FRS was an English geologist, palaeontologist and Dean of Westminster, who wrote the first full account of a fossil dinosaur, which he named Megalosaurus...
, Reverend W. D. Conybeare
William Daniel Conybeare
William Daniel Conybeare FRS , dean of Llandaff, was an English geologist, palaeontologist and clergyman. He is probably best known for his ground-breaking work on marine reptile fossils in the 1820s, including important papers for the Geological Society of London on ichthyosaur anatomy and the...
, Henry Warburton
Henry Warburton
Henry Warburton was an English merchant and politician, and also an enthusiastic amateur scientist....
, and Thomas Webster
Thomas Webster (geologist)
Thomas Webster , Scottish geologist, was born in Orkney, and was educated at Aberdeen.He subsequently went to London and studied architecture, the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street being built from his design...
, and amongst others from Henry Thomas De la Beche
Henry De la Beche
Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche FRS was an English geologist and palaeontologist who helped pioneer early geological survey methods.-Biography:...
, John Farey
John Farey, Sr.
John Farey, Sr. was an English geologist and writer. However, he is better known for a mathematical construct, the Farey sequence named after him.-Biography:...
, the Rev. J. Hailstone
John Hailstone
John Hailstone , geologist, born near London on 13 Dec. 1759, was placed at an early age under the care of a maternal uncle at York, and was sent to Beverley school in the East Riding. Samuel Hailstone was a younger brother. John went to Cambridge, entering first at Catharine Hall, and afterwards...
, David Mushet
David Mushet
David Mushet was a Scottish metallurgist and the youngest son of Margaret Cochran and William Mushet.-Early life:Mushet was born on October 2, 1772, in Dalkeith, near Edinburgh. He was educated at Dalkeith Grammar School....
, Thomas Biddle and Arthur Aikin
Arthur Aikin
Arthur Aikin , English chemist, mineralogist and scientific writer, was born in Warrington, Lancashire into a distinguished literary family of prominent Unitarians....
.
A first draft of the geological map was presented to the Geological Society as early as 1812 but there was dissatisfaction with the quality of the engraving of the topographical map, resulting in the base map not being ready until 1814. In 1815 William Smith William Smith
William Smith (geologist)
William 'Strata' Smith was an English geologist, credited with creating the first nationwide geological map. He is known as the "Father of English Geology" for collating the geological history of England and Wales into a single record, although recognition was very slow in coming...
published his famous geological map and when Greenough finally published his map five years later it was clear he was heavily indebted to Smith's work in delineating strata (although not acknowledged until the 1865 edition); nevertheless Greenough's map contained more geological detail and was better cartographically. Smith had relied on a theory about the linear arrangement of strata identified by characteristic fossils to extrapolate from his observations (Smith himself was indebted to John Strachey
John Strachey
Sir John Strachey GCSI, CIE , British Indian civilian, fifth son of Edward Strachey, second son of Sir Henry Strachey, 1st Baronet, was born in London, England. After passing through the East India Company College, Strachey entered the Bengal civil service in 1842, and served in the North-Western...
's theory of strata for his ideas), and so was able to map out the distribution of strata across the country. Greenough, on the other hand, did not go by theory, and it was probably this aversion that delayed the preparation of his map.
It has been claimed that Greenough and the Geological Society failed to work with William Smith in the production of a geological map due to snobbishness, but Rachel Lauden argues that a more compelling reason is that Greenough did not consider that fossils could reveal anything about the nature of rocks. Greenough considered that fossils had been very over-rated in their usefulness, as fossil species were different from modern species, so fossils could not be used to 'theorise' about or deduce the relative age and the conditions of deposition of the rocks. Indeed, he was suspicious of the concepts of 'stratum and 'formation, much used by Smith.
For this reason Greenough wanted to dissociate himself and the Geological Society map from the man who was using fossils to identify strata. Seemingly, Greenough had intellectual reasons rather than primarily social reasons for not collaborating with Smith. Both maps maps now hang side by side on the main staircase in the entrance hall of The Geological Society apartments in Burlington House, London.
In 1843 he started to prepare a geological Map of British India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. In 1852 he produced a series of maps of Hindustan
Hindustan
Hindustan or Indostan, literal translation "Land of River Sindhu ", is one of the popular names of South Asia. It can also mean "the land of the Hindus"...
, mainly hydrographical
Hydrography
Hydrography is the measurement of the depths, the tides and currents of a body of water and establishment of the sea, river or lake bed topography and morphology. Normally and historically for the purpose of charting a body of water for the safe navigation of shipping...
, defining all the important elements of the ten water basins of the Indian Peninsula (for the Asiatic Society
Asiatic Society
The Asiatic Society was founded by Sir William Jones on January 15, 1784 in a meeting presided over by Sir Robert Chambers, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the Fort William in Calcutta, then capital of the British Raj, to enhance and further the cause of Oriental research. At the time of...
), and in 1854 a large-scale geological map of the whole of British India, published as a ‘General Sketch of the Physical and Geological Features of British India. Greenough never visited India but much as he had done for his earlier maps of England and Wales, he compiled his map from scraps of information gathered from many observations of individuals recorded in scattered sources, demonstrating one of Greenough's key strengths—his assiduous ability to collect and collate information for his empirical cause.
Greenough died at Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
on 2 April 1855. He is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, North London.
He bequeathed his fossil collection to the Geology Department at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
(UCL) and his notebooks are in the Greenough Papers collection held at UCL Library. The student geological society at UCL is named after Greenough.