Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Mather, Kirtley F. & Mason, Shirley L. (eds.), A Source Book in Geology 1400-1900
(Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1970)
Oldroyd, David R. Thinking About the Earth: a History of Ideas in Geology
(Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1996)
Schneer, Cecil J. (ed.) Toward a History of Geology (Cambridge MA & London: MIT
Press, 1969)
Thompson, Susan J. A Chronology of Geological Thinking from Antiquity to 1899
(Metuchen NJ & London: Scarecrow Press, 1988)
Ward, Dederick C. & Carozzi, Albert V. Geology Emerging: a Catalog Illustrating
the History of Geology (1500-1850) from a Collection in the Library of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Urbana-Champaign: University
of Illinois Library, 1984)
York, Derek In Search of Lost Time (Bristol: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1997)
York, Derek & Farquhar, Ronald M. The Earth's Age and Geochronology (Oxford:
Pergamon, 1972)
Young, Davis A. Christianity and the Age of the Earth (Thousand Oaks CA: Artisan
Sales, 1988)
Papers on aspects of this story and others in the history of geology may be found in
Earth Sciences History, Journal of Geological Education, Isis, British Journal for the
History of Science, and Annals of Science among others. The Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) remains invaluable, containing
biographical information on many clerics, thinkers, travellers, physicists, geolog-
ists, earth scientists and oddities. In equal measure C. C. Gillespie (ed.) Dictionary
of Scientific Biography, 16 vols (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1970-1976)
and B. Lightman (ed.) Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists, 4 vols
(Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004) are indispensable sources of biographical
information. The National Academy of Sciences in Washington maintains biogra-
phies of many of its members, a number of whom feature large in this story. For Irish
scientists see C. Mollan, W. Davis and B. Finucane (eds.) Irish Innovators in Science
and Technology (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2002).
Chapter 1. The ancients: early chronologies
The quotation from Lucretius is taken from John Joly's essay 'The birth-time of the
World', Science Progress 9 (1914), 37 (this was reprinted in 1915 in his book of the
same name: The Birth-time of the World and Other Scientific Essays (London:
T. Fisher Unwin, 1915) pp. xv, 307). A useful treatise on early cosmological thinking
of various civilisations is that by Dick Teresi, Lost Discoveries (New York: Simon &
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