Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
found them 'incredibly dull. The sole effect they produced on me was
the determination never as long as I lived to read a book on Geology, or
in any way study the science.' Obviously at the time, the University of
Edinburgh did not have a student assessment programme, which was
fortunate for Jameson, or an Office of Teaching Methodology, which
was unfortunate for his students. Fortunately for science, Darwin
could not continue his medical studies as he was unable to cope
with observing operations, which were conducted at the time without
the aid of anaesthesia, and he dropped out in 1827. Returning home he
was soon afterwards sent to Cambridge where he was encouraged to
take a general degree - the usual route for those seeking a career in the
Church - and while there came under the influence of Henslow, the
University Professor of Botany, and Adam Sedgwick, the Professor of
Geology. Thanks to these two men, Darwin developed a serious inter-
est in natural history. In July 1831 he had purchased a clinometer used
to measure the dip and strike of layers or beds of rock and at much the
same time attempted to draw a crude geological map of the district
around Shrewsbury. The following month he spent some time in the
company of Sedgwick rambling through the geology of the north
Wales coastline. He then joined the Beagle as the ship's naturalist.
In his library on board was Lyell's Principles of Geology which he read
and was convinced by Lyell's premise of the uniform state of geologi-
cal processes. He carried out geological field work on the Azores, and
collected fabulous fossils in Patagonia. He wrote up his geological
observations made on the voyage in three works: The Structure and
Distribution of Coral Reefs (1842); Geological Observations on the
Volcanic Islands, Visited During the Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle (1844);
and Geological Observations on South America (1846).
Thanks to his writings and observations made during the Beagle
voyage, Darwin's scientific reputation was without question. Although
the majority of people today regard him as a biologist, the bulk of his
early works were in fact geological. He was regarded as being a geologist
by his peers of the Geological Society, which in 1859 awarded him the
WollastonMedal. This was presented at a meeting on 18 February 1859
