Murchison, Sir Roderick Impey definition of Murchison, Sir Roderick Impey in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Murchison, Sir Roderick Impey (mûr`kĭsən), 1792–1871, British geologist. He served in the Napoleonic Wars but after the peace turned his attention to science. In the 1830s he undertook the investigation of previously undifferentiated rock strata in Wales and England; as a result of his researches he established the Silurian Silurian period (sĭl
..... Click the link for more information. as a new geologic system and described it in The Silurian System (2 vol. in 1, 1839). With Adam Sedgwick Sedgwick, Adam, 1785–1873, English geologist. He was a professor at Cambridge from 1818. His most important work was a study, made with R. I. Murchison, of the rock formation of Devonshire, which they named the Devonian system.
..... Click the link for more information. he collaborated on the establishment of the Devonian system, and after carrying on an extended survey in Russia (1840–44) he also defined and named the Permian period Permian period (pûr`mēən)
..... Click the link for more information. . His last investigations were directed toward the geology of the Scottish Highlands. In 1846 he was knighted, and in 1855 he was appointed director-general of the Geological Survey of Great Britain. Murchison endowed a chair of geology and mineralogy at the Univ. of Edinburgh. He revised and modified the material of his earlier work in Siluria (1854) and collaborated on the Geology of Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains (1845).

Bibliography

See biography by Sir Archibald Geikie (2 vol., 1875).