Andrew Ramsay

Andrew Ramsay

Sir Andrew Crombie Ramsay (born January 31, 1814 in Glasgow , † December 9, 1891 ) was a Scottish geologist.

Live and act

Ramsay was the son of a paint manufacturer in Glasgow. He came to geology relatively late in 1840 when he created a geological model of the island of Arran for the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science . That convinced Roderick Murchison , who brought him to the Geological Survey of Great Britain.

In 1847 he became professor of geology at University College London . From 1852 he taught at the Government School of Mines ( Royal School of Mines ), whose director he became in 1871. In 1872 he succeeded Roderick Murchison as director general of the Geological Survey.

Among other things, he dealt with geomorphology, the relationship between landscape forms and geology, for example in the case of erosion of river valleys and glaciation.

He had been a Fellow of the Geological Society of London since 1844 , of which he became President in 1862. In 1871 he was awarded the Wollaston Medal . In 1862 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society . In 1866 he received the Neill Prize of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in 1866 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. In 1875 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1880 he became President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and in 1881 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor . The rock spur Ramsay Wedge in the East Antarctic Coatsland has been named after him since 1972 .

Works

• Physical Geology and Geography of Great Britain (1894)
• The Geology of the Isle of Arran . (1841)
• On the Denudation of South Wales and the Adjacent Counties of England . In: Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain 1 . (1846) pp. 297-335
• The Old Glaciers of Switzerland and North Wales (1860)
• The Geology of North Wales (1866, 2nd ed. 1881)

Web links

• biography