Adam Sedgwick

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**Adam Sedgwick** <tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">Image:Adam Sedgwick.jpg
Adam Sedgwick</td></tr>
Born	March 22nd, 1785 Dent, Yorkshire <tr><th>Died</th><td>January 27, 1873 Cambridge, England</td></tr><tr><th>Residence</th><td>Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg UK</td></tr><tr><th>Nationality</th><td>Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg British</td></tr><tr><th>Field</th><td>Geologist</td></tr><tr><th>Institution</th><td>University of Cambridge</td></tr><tr><th>Alma Mater</th><td>University of Cambridge</td></tr><tr><th>Academic Advisor</th><td>Thomas Jones and John Dawson</td></tr><tr><th>Notable Students</th><td>William Hopkins</br>Charles Darwin</td></tr><tr><th>Known for</th><td>Classification of Cambrian rocks</td></tr><tr><th>Notable Prizes</th><td>Wollaston Medal (1833)</br> Copley Medal (1863)</td></tr><tr><th>Religion</th><td>Anglican</td></tr>

Adam Sedgwick (March 22nd, 1785–January 27, 1873) was one of the founders of modern geology. He proposed the Devonian period of the geological timescale and later the Cambrian period. The latter proposal was based on work which he did on Welsh rock strata.

Sedgwick was born in Dent, Yorkshire, the third child of an Anglican vicar. He was educated at Sedbergh School and Trinity College, Cambridge.

He obtained his B.A. from the University of Cambridge in 1808. His mentors at Cambridge were Thomas Jones and John Dawson.

Sedwick studied the geology of the British Isles and Europe. He founded the system for the classification of Cambrian rocks and with Murchison worked out the order of the carboniferous and underlying Devonian strata. He investigated the phenomena of metamorphism and concretion, and was the first to distinguish clearly between stratification, jointing, and slaty cleavage as mechanisms to juxtapose different kinds of rock.

Charles Darwin was one of his geological students and the two kept up a correspondence while Darwin was aboard the Beagle. However Sedgwick never accepted the case for evolution made in the Origin of Species. At one point he wrote to Darwin saying

If I did not think you a good tempered and truth-loving man I should not tell you that ... I have read your book with more pain than pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly; parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore; other parts I read with absolute sorrow; because I think them utterly false and grievously mischievous. You have deserted -- after a start in that tram-road of all solid physical truth -- the true method of induction ...

However despite this difference of opinion, the two men remained friendly until Sedgwick's death.

[edit] References

J.W. Clark and T.M. Hughes, The Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, Cambridge University Press, 1890, vols. 1-2.
Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons: 1970-1990; vol. 12, pp. 275-279.
A Biographical Dictionary of Scientists, Williams, T. I., Ed., Wiley, 1969, pp. 467-468.
Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (2nd Ed.), Doubleday: 1982, p. 299.
Quart. J. Geol. Soc., 1873, 29, pp. xxx-xxxix.
Dictionary of National Biography, Smith, Elder & Co., 1908-1986, vol. 17, pp. 1117-1120.