George Bellas Greenough
George Bellas Greenough ( born January 18, 1778 in London as George Bellas, † April 2, 1855 in Naples) was an English geologist.
Life
He was the son of a wealthy lawyer, but lost his fortune and died a Greenough was six years old. His mother died soon after, and he was adopted by his maternal grandfather, who in London had a well-known pharmacy. He spent a year at Eton and then to school in Kensington. From 1795 he spent three years studying law at Oxford University (Pembroke College), but without a degree to make. In 1798 he moved to the Georg -August- University of Göttingen, where he also initially studied law and was inspired by the lectures of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach for natural history, especially of Geology and Mineralogy. To this end, he also undertook in 1799 two resin trips. He also studied mineralogy at the Freiberg with Abraham Gottlob Werner. In Göttingen he became friends with Samuel Coleridge, and Clement Carlyon. In 1801 he returned to England, attended lectures by Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution and undertook geological field research when traveling in England and France. Since he was financially independent, he was able to devote scientific research. In 1805 he traveled with James Skene to Scotland and in 1806 Humphry Davy to Ireland, where he began to be interested in social issues.
1807 to 1812 he was a member of the House for the constituency Borough of Gatton. In 1807 he was inducted into the Royal Society.
He was in 1807 one of the founders of the Geological Society of London, whose chairman and from 1811 onwards he was the first president.
In 1819 he published his famous Geological Map of England and Wales, published in 1865 in the second and third edition 1839. She was the result of many years of work of the Geological Society, whose maps Commission Greenough board since 1809, and built on the 1815 geological map published by William Smith. However, Greenough himself was skeptical of the use of fossils in stratigraphy by Smith.
From the 1840s he began to geological maps for India to work. 1852, Hydrogeologic map of Hindustan and 1854 published a geological map of India.
Greenough was instrumental not only in the founding of the Geological Society, but also to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1831 and 1830, the Royal Geographical Society, of which he was president from 1839 to 1841.
He regularly traveled through Europe on geological excursions and died in Naples from dropsy on a journey that would take him to Italy further to the East.
He was a member of the Leopoldina since 1822.
His estate is in the University College London. The Greenough River in Western Australia is named after him. To him, the plant genus Greenovia was named in honor.
Writings
- A critical examination of the first principles of geology, 1819
- Geologist ( 19th century)
- Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society
- Member of the Royal Society
- Name to a genus
- Briton
- English
- Member of the Leopoldina (19th Century )
- Born in 1778
- Died in 1855
- Man