Geology in Credo: Notable People

Swiss-born US palaeontologist and geologist who developed the idea of the ice age.

Mary Anning supplied fossils to palaeontologists, collectors and museums, as well as to the visitors to her shop in Lyme Regis and attracted the general public to fossil-collecting and to herself, by her successes.

In The Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific Biography
English geologist and palaeontologist, a pioneer of British geology.

French zoologist eminent for his role in the founding of modern palaeontology.

Scottish natural philosopher who pioneered uniformitarian geology.

Scottish geologist who succeeded in turning the opinion of his time away from the theory that the Earth was produced literally along the lines expounded in the Old Testament book of Genesis towards the principle of an unlimited, gradual effect of natural forces. His beliefs became known in geology as ‘uniformitarianism’.

From The Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific Biography
German mineralogist who devised the Mohs scale, by which minerals are classified in order of relative hardness.

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
English engineer and geologist, known as the founder of the science of stratigraphy. The son of a blacksmith, he was largely self-educated. He produced the first geologic map of England and Wales (1815), setting the style for modern geologic maps, and subsequently a series of geologic maps of the English counties. He introduced many techniques still used, including the use of fossils for the dating of layers.

In The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Danish anatomist and naturalist, one of the founders of stratigraphy. To illustrate his ideas, Steno sketched what are probably the earliest geological sections.

German geologist, meteorologist, and Arctic explorer.

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
German-US geophysicist: he made two important contributions; he deduced from earthquake shock waves the existence of a zone in the mantle where seismic waves travel with low velocities (1913), and in 1914 he made the first correct determination of the depth to the Earth's core, which he concluded is liquid.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Irish seismologist who discovered the earth's core and first distinguished between primary and secondary seismic waves.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
US seismologist and government science adviser. As director of the California Institute of Technology's seismological laboratory, Press and his colleagues first identified the "free oscillations" of the earth – the persistent global vibrations arising from earthquakes and other geological disturbances.

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
US seismologist: devised the Richter scale of earthquake strength (1927-35)