Christopher Packe
Christopher Packe (born March 6, 1686 in St Albans , Hertfordshire , † November 15, 1749 in Canterbury ) was a British doctor and geologist who published one of the earliest geological maps or geomorphological maps in 1743 .
Life
Packe was the son of the London chemist and pharmacist Christopher Packe. He attended the Merchant Taylors' School from 1695 and studied medicine at Cambridge , where he received his doctorate in 1717 ( MD ). In 1723 he applied for admission to the College of Physicians. In 1726 he married and settled in Canterbury, where he was a respected doctor.
For his map of the Canterbury area (within a 15 to 16 mile radius) he measured the heights with a barometer and mounted a theodolite on the steeple of Canterbury Cathedral . He published a first version in 1737 (in an essay he presented to the Royal Society ) and printed separately in 1743 with explanatory notes, at his own expense. The map is not yet a geological map in the true sense of the word. His aim was to trace the shape of the valleys in which the water flowed off after Packe after the flood and what was important for drainage issues on the land. He also compared the system of rivers with the course of arteries and veins in the human body. The map contains information on private land ownership and geology (embankments and rocky slopes, gravel pits, chalk quarries, sites of amber and copper and other things). He corresponded with Hans Sloane .
His son Christopher (died 1800) was also a doctor in Canterbury.
In 1725/26 Packe donated an organ for the church of his birthplace St. Albans.
Fonts
- A Dissertation upon the Surface of the Earth, as delineated in a specimen of a Philosophico-Chorographical Chart of East Kent, London 1737
- A New Philosophico-chorographical Chart of East Kent, Canterbury 1743
literature
- Saul Jarcho: Christopher Packe (1686-1749), physician-cartographer of Kent, J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 33, 1978, 47-52
- Eila MT Campbell: An English Philosophico-Chorographical Chart, Imago Mundi, Volume 6, 1949, pp. 79-84
- Gordon Goodwin: Christopher Packe, in Dictionary of National Biography , Volume 43
- Michael Charlesworth: Mapping, the body and desire: Christopher Packe's chorography of Kent, in: Denis Cosgrove, Mappings, Reaction Books 1999, 109–124
- Yi-Fu Tuan: The hydrologic cycle and the wisdom of God: A theme in Geoteleology, Toronto 1968
- Matthew H. Edney: Reconsidering Enlightenment Geography and Map-Making: Reconnaissance, Mapping, Archive, in David N. Livingstone, Charles WJ Withers, Geography and Enlightenment, University of Chicago Press 1999
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pack up, Christopher |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British geologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 6, 1686 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | St Albans , Hertfordshire |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 15, 1749 |
| Place of death | Canterbury |