Andrew Ramsay (geologist)

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

Life and work

Ramsay was the son of a color manufacturer in Glasgow. He came relatively late to Geology, 1840 when he created a geological model of the Isle 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 was in 1871. In 1872, he was the successor of Roderick Murchison as Director General of the Geological Survey.

It addressed, among others, geomorphology, the relationship of landforms with geology for example, erosion of river valleys and glaciation.

He was since 1844 a Fellow of the Geological Society of London, its president in 1862. In 1871 he was awarded the Wollaston medal. In 1862 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1866 he was awarded the Neill Prize of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in 1866 he became an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. In 1880 he became president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and in 1881 he was knighted.

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 edition 1881)