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William "Strata" Smith, Father of Geology
Born the eldest of four children of an Oxfordshire farmer, William Smith had little or no formal education. He developed a childhood passion for the collection of fossils, no doubt unearthed when the land was being ploughed.
His first proper employment was as an assistant surveyor, progressing to become a surveyor and civil engineer.
By the age of 24 years he was commissioned to carry out a survey for the Somerset Coal Canal and throughout the next twenty years he worked extensively in the canal field, studying canal management in Newcastle and travelling the country surveying and repairing canals and also being instrumental in coastal defence works in Norfolk.
All of this gave William Smith the opportunity to follow his passion for collecting fossils and studying rock strata.
He quickly became renowned in the field of geology and is widely credited with being the first person to regard geology as a science., having deduced that the World is made up of strata and, if you studied the fossils in the different strata layers you could see the evolution of life-this being regarded as his supreme contribution to science.
Despite clearly being well able to document, or have documented, his findings and theories, William Smith appeared to have little thought for the commercial benefit for himself by the writing of books or academic papers. His “list of strata in the order of their succession from the Chalk to the Coal Measures”, now regarded as a document of great historical and geological significance and preserved by the Geological Society, was merely dictated by him to a friend, the Reverend Benjamin Richardson.
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In his honour, the museum, which is perhaps the oldest surviving purpose built museum in the country, was re-opened on the 14th September 2007 by HRH The Prince of Wales and is now called “The Rotunda - The William Smith Museum of Geology.” Situated within a stone’s throw of the South Bay beach this is an attraction which no one, young or old, should miss from their Scarborough holiday itinery. |