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Geologists - incl. Palaeontologists, Meteorologists and Geophysicists
This project features Famous Geologists - the purpose being to identify Geologists on Geni, and develop trees for those who are not yet listed. It will probably become necessary to have new projects for some specialities in future.
There are many different fields of geology to specialise in, each with its own specific fields of work, and value. Studying palaeontology is key to understanding how organisms evolve and interact with each other, while mineralogy looks at how valuable minerals were formed, how pollutants disperse, and from a commercial point of view, how best to mine, and make the most of these natural resources. Other fields include engineering geology, which plays a vital part in the planning of any manmade structure, and any hazards that may be faced.
To participate in any project
- you do need to first be a collaborator - so join the project. Project Help: How to add Text to a Project - Starter Kit to get you going!
A
- Vladimir Abazarov (1930-2003), Soviet geologist, discoverer of Samotlor oil field
- Otto Wilhelm Hermann von Abich (1806–1886), German mineralogist
- Aziz Ab'Saber (born 1924), Brazilian geomorphologist
- Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), Swiss-American geologist, work on ice ages, glaciers, Lake Agassiz
- Georgius Agricola (Georg Bauer) (1494–1555), German naturalist and 'Father of Mineralogy', author of De re metallica
- Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), Italy, Renaissance naturalist
- Claude Allègre (born 1937), French geochemist
- Fernando Flávio Marques de Almeida (born 1919) Brazilian geologist
- Walter Alvarez (born 1940), USA, co-author of the impact theory for the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event
- J. Willis Ambrose, first President of Geological Association of Canada
- Roy Chapman Andrews (1884–1960), American explorer and naturalist; Mongolian dinosaurs
- Mary Ann Anning (21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847) Known throughout history as ‘the fossil hunter’ Mary Anning was fascinated with pre-historic life. A British born palaeontologist, she collected and dealt in fossils, and became a global star in her field, thanks to several finds she made right on her doorstep.
- Étienne Jules Adolphe Desmier de Saint-Simon, Vicomte d'Archiac (24 September 1802 – 24 December 1868) was a French geologist and paleontologist. He was born at Reims and educated at the Military School of St. Cyr, and served for nine years as a cavalry officer until 1830, when he retired from the service.
- Giovanni Arduino (1714–1795), Italian, first classification of geological time
- Richard Lee Armstrong (1937–1991), American/Canadian geochemist
- Tanya Atwater, California, USA geophysicist, marine geologist, plate tectonics specialist
B
- Andrew Geddes Bain (1797–1864), South Africa, prepared first detailed geological map of South Africa
- Geoffrey Bond a former professor of geology at the University of Rhodesia.
C
- Dr. Alan Hall Coogan is a former professor of geology at Kent State University. He received his M.A. in paleontology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1957. Dr. Coogan received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana in geology in 1962. He then went on to receive his J.D. from the University of Akron in 1977. Dr. Coogan was a geology professor at Kent State University from 1967 until his retirement in 1999.
D
- Achille Ernest Oscar Joseph Delesse (3 February 1817 – 24 March 1881) was a French geologist and mineralogist. He was born at Metz. At the age of twenty he entered the École Polytechnique, and subsequently passed through the Ecole des Mines. In 1845, he was appointed to the chair of mineralogy and geology at Besançon; in 1850, to the chair of geology at the Sorbonne in Paris; and in 1864, professor of agriculture at the Ecole des Mines.
G
- Abraham Pineo Gesner (May 2, 1797 - April 29, 1864) was a Canadian physician and geologist who invented kerosene. Although Ignacy Łukasiewicz developed the modern kerosene lamp, starting the world's oil industry, Gesner is considered a primary founder. Gesner was born in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia. He died in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Born to a well-established farming family in the Annapolis Valley, Pineo Gesner pursued a career at sea from a young age.
H
- William John Hamilton (5 July 1805 – 27 June 1867) was an English geologist born in Wishaw, Lanarkshire
- Albany Hancock (1806-1873), naturalist, biologist and supporter of Charles Darwin, was born on Christmas Eve in Newcastle upon Tyne. He is best-known for his works on marine animals and coal-measure fossils. He was educated at The Royal Grammar School, before being articled to a local solicitor.
- Thomas Hawkins (1810–1889), English fossil collector
- Arthur Holmes (14 January 1890 – 20 September 1965) was a British geologist. As a child he lived in Low Fell, Gateshead and attended the Gateshead Higher Grade School (later Gateshead Grammar School). Holmes was a pioneer of geochronology, and performed the first uranium-lead radiometric dating
- Dorothy Hill AC, CBE, FAA, FRS (10 September 1907 – 23 April 1997), Australian geologist, and the first woman to be a professor at an Australian university, and the first woman to be President of the Australian Academy of Sciences.
- James Hutton (1726-1797)
K
- Alexander Petrovich Karpinsky (Russian: Алекса́ндр Петро́вич Карпи́нский; 7 January 1847 (NS) – 15 July 1936) was a prominent Russian and Soviet geologist and mineralogist, and the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and later Academy of Sciences of the USSR, in 1917–1936. Karpinsky was born in Turyinskiye Rudniki (now Krasnoturyinsk, Sverdlovsk Oblast), to a family of mining engineers.
- Alan Stanley Kornacki (born May 4, 1952, in Bayonne, New Jersey) is an American geologist and retired Army colonel, currently the Senior Staff Geochemist at Shell International Exploration and Production Inc. He received a B.S. in Geology from University of Missouri–Rolla in 1974, before completing his M.S. and Ph.D. in Geology at Harvard University in 1984, on a Graduate Research Fellowship.
L
- Charles Lapworth (1842–1920), English Geologist, defined the Ordovician Period
- Inge Lehmann (1888-1993)
- Sir Charles Lyell (14 November 1797 – 22 February 1875) was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularised James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianism – the idea that the earth was shaped by the same processes still in operation today. Lyell was a close and influential friend of Charles Darwin.
- Albert Peter Low (May 24, 1861 – October 9, 1942) was a Canadian geologist, explorer and athlete. His explorations of 1893–1895 were important in declaring Canada's sovereignty over the Arctic, and eventually defining the border between Quebec and Labrador. He was born in Montreal, Quebec, and attended McGill University, graduating in 1882.
M
- Sir Douglas Mawson, OBE, FRS, FAA (5 May 1882 – 14 October 1958) Australian geologist and Antarctic explorer.
- Alexander Moes 1998 B.Sc. Univ. of Tech., Sydney. Nickel and gold exploration and mining in West Australian Goldfields and Pilbara regions.
- Alexander Murray, CMG (2 June 1810 – 18 December 1884) was a Scottish geologist. Murray was born in Crieff, Perthshire, Scotland. He worked as a geologist in the United Kingdom and Canada, before coming to Newfoundland in 1864 to become the first director of the Geological Survey of Newfoundland. His first major task was to produce a reliable topographical map of the interior of the island.
- Friedrich Mohs (1773-1839)
O
- Adolf Overweg (July 24, 1822 – September 27, 1852) was a German geologist, astronomer, and traveler from Hamburg. As a member of a mission to fix trade routes in Central Africa he became the first person of European origin to circumnavigate Lake Chad. In 1849 he joined an expedition under the command of James Richardson set to leave Tripoli in the Spring of 1850 in order to help the British government forge relations with central African kingdoms.
R
- Michael Raath was born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He discovered a fossil which was to become the holotype of Syntarsus. In 1978 he was appointed the first full-time director of the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, and the Professor of Palaeontology and Palaeoenvironmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. He was a founder member of the Palaeontological Society of Southern Africa.
- Charles Richter: (1900–1985), a United States scientist. With Beno Gutenberg devised a magnitude scale that has been widely used to report the strength of earthquake shocks. They wrote Seismicity of the Earth (1941), the standard reference work on seismology (the study of earthquakes). Richter was born in Hamilton, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology, and taught there from 1927 to 1970.
S
- Adam Sedgwick (22 March 1785 – 27 January 1873) was one of the founders of modern geology. He proposed the Devonian period of the geological timescale. Later, he proposed the Cambrian period, based on work which he did on Welsh rock strata. Though he had guided the young Charles Darwin in his early study of geology, Sedgwick was an outspoken opponent of Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection.
- William Smith (1769-1839) Father of English Geology. The first nationwide geological map was penned and put together by English born geologist William Smith. Smith was nicknamed the ‘father of geology’, for putting his studies of England and Wales into a single geological record.
- Flaxman Charles John Spurrell (1842–1915), English archaeologist, geologist and photographer
- Paweł Edmund Strzelecki KCB CMG FRGS MRS (24 June 1797 - 6 October 1873. In 1839 he made a geological survey of the Gippsland area of Victoria. He discovered gold in 1939. From 1840-1842 he explored Tasmania. He then went on to explore the current day Victoria and New South Wales. In 1845 he published his Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land for which he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in May 1846.
T
- Alexander Logie du Toit (14 March 1878 – 25 February 1948) was a geologist from South Africa, and an early supporter of Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift. Born in Newlands, Cape Town in 1878, du Toit was educated at the Diocesan College in Rondebosch and the University of the Cape of Good Hope.
W
- Mary Julia Wade (3 February 1928 - 14 September 2005) was an Australian paleontologist working first in South Australia and then in Queensland. She was a "world-renowned authority on Ordovician nautiloids, dinosaur trackways, Precambrian fossils and Cretaceous marine reptiles".
- William Bennett Webster (1798-1861) amateur geologist, he studied the minerals of the Blomidon area in company with Abraham Gesner, his brother-in-law, and formed an outstanding geological collection which was eventually presented by his widow to the Provincial Museum. He discovered an interesting fossil which was named Dictyonema Websteri in his honour. He was also remembered as a man who invented “mechanical contrivances.”
- Alfred Wegener (1880-1930)
- Abraham Gottlob Werner (September 25, 1749 – June 30, 1817), was a German geologist who set out an early theory about the stratification of the Earth's crust and coined the word Neptunism. Though much of Werner's theoretical work was erroneous, science is indebted to him for clearly demonstrating the chronological succession of rocks, for the zeal which he infused into his pupils, and for the impulse which he thereby gave to the study of geology.
- Frederick William Whitehouse 1900-1973. Graduated from the University of Queensland in Geology and Mineralogy. He then completed a Ph.D. at St john's College, Cambridge, on marine Cretaceous sequences in Australia. In 1941 he was awarded the Walter Burffit prize and medal for his work on the Great Artesian Basin's stratigraphy.
Other well know Geologists can seen at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_geologists