George Julius Poulett Scrope

George Julius Scrope ( born March 10, 1797 in London, † January 19, 1876 in Cobham, Surrey ) was an English geologist.

George Julius ( Poulett ) Scrope was born on 10 March 1797, the second son of the big merchant J. Poulett Thomson in the present-day London Borough of Surrey. After school, he attended a short time the Pembroke College, Oxford and then the famous St John 's College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1821 with a Bachelor of Arts. Early on he was interested in scientific topics in particular of Geography and Geology. He studied intensively the volcanic phenomena of Vesuvius and Etna during a prolonged stay in Italy (1817 -1820 ). In October 1822, he was an eyewitness to a strong eruption of Vesuvius. Scrope logged and discussed in detail the expansive powers of the underground magma, and especially the huge expansive forces hot vapors ( up to 800 oC ) that are not predictable when direct contact with the cooler air of the atmosphere physical phenomena can cause ( pyroclastic flows, for example ), one of which can assume enormous risk to human health and the environment ( see adjacent illustration of GJ Scrope from 1864 ).

1824 G.J. Scrope honorary member of the Geological Society of London in 1867 and honored with the award of the Wollaston Medal. Scrope published during his life several basic geological works on the volcanism.