Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 10.1 John Phillips
(1800-1874) (from Geological
Magazine 7 (1870), facing p. 301).
then the characteristics of the present environments and the rocks
that they produced could be used to get a portrait of what the past was
like. The geologists were familiar with a large range of sedimentary
rocks and would have been pretty confident that they knew how and
where they formed. In 1860 the English geologist John Phillips
(Figure
10.1
) first estimated the actual age of the Earth using sediment
accumulation as a indicator of time. From the 1830s, he had recogn-
ised that its antiquity was of enormous duration although he did not
attempt to quantify quite how enormous. Following his 1860 calcula-
tions, others in Britain and Ireland and in the United States followed
suit using his methodology.
Given that Phillips was orphaned at an early age and his formal
education, which was undertaken in Wiltshire, ceased at the age of
fifteen, he had an extraordinarily successful geological career: he held
chairs in London at King's College (1834-1839), at Trinity College
Dublin (1843-1844), and at Oxford (1860 until his death in 1874).
Born on Christmas Day 1800 at Marden in Wiltshire, he lost both of
his parents before his eighth birthday, and he was raised by his uncle
