Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
from 1895 until 1901 with the student honour society Sigma Xi,
which was established in 1886. Although similar honour organisa-
tions existed for other subjects and in other universities, Sigma Xi
was the first of its kind in science. To many non-Americans these
organisations with their Greek names sound suspiciously like some
religious cult. This is not the case. Sigma Xi was set up as a scientific
honour society to encourage members to develop a sense of belong-
ing and cooperation in scientific and engineering research, and to
reward subsequent excellence. Rapidly the organisation expanded so
that by 1900 it boasted over a thousand members in eight chapters. It
has to be remembered that many universities in North America were
rather young compared with those in Europe, and so the proliferation
of honour systems helped to promote a sense of loyalty amongst
alumni. After his retirement from Cornell, Williams spent a great
deal of time in Cuba working on various oil prospects. He died in
Havana.
The two decades of the 1830s and 1840s saw the defining of most
of the remaining geological succession into clear and recognisable
Periods or lesser units. In 1833 Charles Lyell published a subdivision
of the Tertiary into several Epochs based on the number of living
species that they contained. His oldest Epoch, the Eocene, from the
Greek e´os meaning dawn, contained a small number of extant species;
the Miocene, from meıˆon meaning less, contained rather more; and
his youngest unit, the Pliocene, from pleıˆon meaning more, had more
still. All the sediments younger than Pliocene, which were coeval
with human activity, he placed into the Recent, although six years
later he recognised that the lowermost sediments contained some
extinct animals and he termed this older unit the Pleisocene. Today
it is most associated with the last ice age, a geological phenomenon
not recognised in the 1830, and its characteristic fauna of woolly
rhinoceros, woolly mammoth and giant Irish deer. It is hard to believe
that as recently as 20,000 years ago these animals roamed the area
around modern-day Trafalgar Square. Did they celebrate the passing of
the old year with such enthusiasm as do modern revellers?
