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How Did Adam Sedgwick Contribute To Science

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Adam Sedgwick was an important figure in the development of the modern discipline of geology. Sedgwick played a significant role in the development and advancement of the principles of geology and contributed to Earth Sciences. Sedgwick discovered the two geological time scales the Devonian and Cambrian period. Sedgwick even taught and influenced the young Charles Darwin, one of the greatest scientist to ever live. But Adam Sedgwick wasn’t the only geologist to become famous. Mary Anning played a significant role in paleontology and as a role model for many women in science. Anning took the paleontologist world by storm for discovering dinosaur fossils before she was even a teenager. Anning not only discovered fossils but had the best fossil …show more content…

He was the third of seven children and his father was a vicar. Sedgwick grew up in a very stable modest home and attended Sedbergh school and then enrolled in Trinity College at Cambridge University. He entered the university as a sizar which is basically a scholarship student similar to a student who gets a “full ride scholarship” in America. In 1817 Sedgwick took his orders and became Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge University in 1818. Sedgwick got this position mostly on the fact that its former occupant John Hailstone had passed away. Sedgwick had no prior knowledge about geology and was very ignorant about the subject. At that time, university appointments were often based upon a man’s general merits rather than his special training. Sedgwick ended up becoming a very active researcher in geology and pathology. Sedgwick immediately set about establishing the importance of geology in university studies. Sedgwick was one of the very first scholars at Cambridge to begin serious acquisition of specimens for Cambridge's geological collections. “Many of these specimens were acquired from other collectors, including a number from the pioneer fossil collector Mary Anning” (Adam …show more content…

Sedgwick met and teamed up with Roderick Murchison, a well known geologist. Sedgwick and Murchison became good friends and collogues until they discovered a new set of rocks. The rock was claimed by Sedgwick to be from the Cambrian period where as Murchison claimed the same rocks to be from the Silurian period. Murchison named his older formation the Silurian, for the Silures, an ancient Welsh tribe. Sedgwick's upper "Cambrian" overlapped with the lower part of Murchison's "Silurian." Murchison, claimed that Sedgwick had taken the lower portion of his Silurian formation and merely given it a new name. Murchison in returned lowered the base of the Silurian geological period, into the later part of the Cambrian period that had been established previously. Sedgwick and Murchison continued to go back and forth arguing over the time scale of the rocks. The resulting argument ended up ruining their friendship. The debate as to when the Silurian began and the Cambrian ended was not fully resolved for many years until 1879. “In 1879, geologist Charles Lapworth settled the dispute by assigning the older rocks to the Cambrian, the newer rocks to the Silurian, and carving out a new period in between: the Ordovician” (Rocky Road: Adam

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