Born at Tarradale, Ross-shire, 19th February 1792, was educated at Durham and the Military College, Great Marlow. He served in Spain and Portugal, and was present at Vimeiro and Corunna. Quitting the army in 1816, he devoted himself to geology, and travelled widely. His establishment of the Silurian system won him the Copley Medal and European fame, increased by his exposition of the Devonian, Permian, and Laurentian systems. He explored parts of Germany, Poland, and the Carpathians, and in 1840–45, with others, carried out a geological survey of the Russian empire. Struck with the resemblance between the Ural Mountains and Australian chains, Murchison in 1844 foreshadowed the discovery of gold in Australia. He was president of the British Association in 1846, and for many years of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1855 he was made director-general of the Geological Survey and director of the Royal School of Mines. His investigations into the crystalline schists of the Highlands led him to a theory (not without error) of regional metamorphism on a large scale. A vice-president of the Royal Society and a foreign member of the French Academy, he was made K.C.B. in 1846, and a baronet in 1863. In 1870 he founded the Edinburgh chair of Geology. He died 22d October 1871. His principal works were “The Silurian System” (1839) and “The Geology of Russia in Europe and the Urals” (1845; 2d ed. 1853). See Life by Sir Archibald Geikie (1875).
Personal
Dined at Carclew; met Sir Roderick and Lady Murchison. He gave me a little lecture on geology, which he regards as an accomplished fact: all the principles of terrestrial arrangements clearly made out, only details to be looked after: mineral veins, however, a quite different case; infinite scope therein for papa and all magneticians. He is specially cautious about giving opinions on matter not immediately in his own province, and seems rather to enjoy the vague ignorance which keeps observers in different branches of science forever guessing.
You will be glad to hear that yesterday, on our own spontaneous idea of Mr. Murchison’s claims to a mark of favour from his own Sovereign, Sir James Graham, with my entire concurrence, wrote to the Queen, advising her Majesty to confer the honour of knighthood on Mr. Murchison at the first levée. The value of the distinction will be that it was unsolicited and unprompted, and that it is intended as a recognition by the Queen of Mr. Murchison’s services in the great cause of science and human knowledge.
Murchison has returned ten years younger than he departed, belly gone, wig gone, and lo! a glossy dark chevelure of his own—how he triumphed at my greyness!
Since these passages went to print Sir R. I. Murchison has passed away, full of years and of honours. I had not the melancholy satisfaction of seeing for the last time our revered Chief, one of whose latest actions was to oppose my reading a paper about the so-called Victoria Nyanza before the Royal Geological Society; whilst another was to erase my name from the list of the Nile explorers when revising his own biography. But peace be to his manes! I respect the silence of a newly made grave.
The picture which rises to the mind when one thinks of Murchison is that of a tall, wiry, muscular frame, which still kept its erectness even under the burden of almost fourscore years. It seemed the type of body for an active geologist who had to win his reputation by dint of hard climbing and walking almost as much as by mental power. It was moreover united in his case with a certain pomp or dignity of manner which at one time recalled the military training of the Peninsular days, at another the formal courtesy of the well-bred gentleman of a bygone generation. No learned body or business meeting or anniversary dinner could well be presided over by one who possessed in a greater degree the preliminary and often very useful advantage of a commanding presence. The dignity, however, was blended with a courtesy and kindliness of manner which usually conciliated even those who might have been most disposed to object to any assumption, or appearance of assumption, of authority on his side. So he moved among his fellows as a leader under whom, in the conduct of affairs, his comrades, even when confessedly his own superiors in mental power and scientific achievement, gladly, and indeed instinctively, ranged themselves.
When Murchison was laid to rest at Brompton in 1871, the most conspicuous among those who walked bareheaded behind the bier was Mr. Gladstone, then First Minister of the Crown.
In person Murchison was tall, wiry, muscular, of a commanding presence and dignified manner. A portrait was painted by Pickersgill, which has been engraved, and there are marble busts at the Geological Society and in the Museum of Economic Geology. Murchison was fortunate not only in the society of a wife who saved him from becoming a mere idler, but also in the possession of means which from the first placed him above want, and in later life were very ample. He was not insensible to the advantages of aristocratic friends and royal favour. His social influence was considerable, and it was exercised for the benefit of science and its workers. One of his last acts was to contribute half the endowment to a chair of geology at Edinburgh. He was a hospitable host, a firm and generous friend, though perhaps, especially in his later years, somewhat too self-appreciative and intolerant of opposition. He was a man of indomitable energy and great powers of work, blessed with an excellent constitution, very methodical and punctual in his habits.
The Silurian System, 1839
His researches, now neglected, are embodied in “The Silurian System” (1839), in which he brought into notice for the first time a remarkable series of rock formations, each replete with distinctive organic remains, different from any other in England…. Sir Roderick Murchison will always be remembered for his having added a new chapter to geological history, a chapter which contains the story of almost the earliest appearance of living things upon the earth.
A treatise of great value but somewhat difficult of perusal to any but the most earnest inquirer. Murchison displayed much skill as one of those “earthly godfathers” who roused the spleen of Byron, but who are regarded with gratitude by students of science—the Silurian, Laurentian and Permian series being all baptised by him.
The publication of this splendid monograph forms a notable epoch in the history of modern geology, and well entitles its author to be enrolled among the founders of the science. For the first time, the succession of fossiliferous formations below the Old Red Sandstone was shown in detail. Their fossils were enumerated, described and figured. It was now possible to carry the vision across a vast series of ages, of which hitherto no definite knowledge existed, to mark the succession of their organisms, and thus to trace backward far farther than had ever before been possible, the history of organized existence on this globe.
General
Dear Murchison,—Many thanks for your yellow book, which is just come down to me. You have gained great fame, and I am very glad of it; had it been in theology, I should have been your rival, and probably have been jealous of you, but as it is in geology, my benevolence and real good-will towards you have fair play. I shall read you out loud to-day. Heaven send I may understand you: not that I suspect your perspicuity, but that my knowledge of your science is too slender for that advantage—a knowledge which just enables me to distinguish between the Caseous and the Cretaceous formations, or, as the vulgar have it, to know chalk from cheese.
It is probably still too soon to attempt an estimate of the actual and lasting contributions made by Murchison to science. But as to the general nature and tendency of his work there can be little diversity of opinion. He was not gifted with the philosophic spirit which evolves broad laws and principles in science. He had hardly any imaginative power. He wanted therefore the genius for dealing with questions of theory, even when they had references to branches of science, the detailed facts of which were familiar to him. The kind of opposition he afforded to the views of the evolutionists, and to the doctrines of those who gainsaid his own favourite faith in former convulsions of nature, showing as it did a warmth of antagonism rather than an aptitude for coherent and logical argument, may be cited as evidence of this natural incapacity as well as of the want of early training in habits of accurate scientific reasoning. But though his name may never be inscribed among those of the recognised magnates in science who are both consummate observers and philosophic reasoners, and who mould the character of science for their own and future times, he will ever hold a high place among the pioneers by whose patient and sagacious power of gathering and marshalling facts new kingdoms of knowledge are added to the intellectual domain of man. He was not a profound thinker, but his contemporaries could hardly find a clearer, more keen-eyed, and careful observer. He had the shrewdness, too, to know wherein his strength lay. Hence he seldom ventured beyond the domain of fact where his first successes were won, and in which throughout his long life he worked so hard and so well. In that domain he had few equals.
Murchison’s name will live for ever as a clear, keen-eyed, careful observer of nature, and as a master of the facts relating to much of the ancient history of the earth. He was a great stimulator of men of science, assisted the weak, and helped the good worker. He had a great personal character, religious, honest, truthful, open and generous.
Perhaps no man of the present century has done more to promote the progress of geographical science and kindle the spirit of adventure among those engaged in Arctic exploration on the one hand and of African discovery on the other. He traveled in various parts of the globe, and, struck with the resemblance in geological structure between the Ural mountains and the Australian chain, he was the first to predict the discovery of gold in Australia.
Chiefly [“Geology of Russia”] remarkable for his argument deduced from structural resemblances of the gold districts of the Ural Mountains to the geological formations in Eastern Australia, that gold was to be found in the latter country. For some years Murchison continued to importune the Colonial authorities to put his assumption to the test, but without success. Gold was found later by unofficial searchers and Sir Roderick—he had been knighted on his return from Russia and was made K.C.B. in 1863 and a baronet three years later—had only the comfort of reflecting that he had been right when the public had forgotten all about his predictions.
