Sedgwick, Adam

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. Sedgwick also introduced the term Cambrian.

Bibliography

See J. W. Clark and T. M. Hughes, The Life and Letters of the Rev. Adam Sedgwick (2 vol., 1890).

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Sedgwick, Adam

(born March 22, 1785, Dent, Yorkshire, Eng.—died Jan. 27, 1873, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) English geologist. A pioneer in the establishment of geology as a university discipline (Trinity College, Oxford), he named the Cambrian Period and (with Roderick Murchison) the Devonian Period. His grandnephew, the zoologist Adam Sedgwick (1854–1913), first established the evolutionary link between the annelids and the arthropods.