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Wollaston Medal

Wollaston Medal

The Wollaston Medal is a scientific award for geology, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London. The medal is named after William Hyde Wollaston, and was first awarded in 1831. It was originally made of palladium, a metal discovered by Wollaston.

Laureates

External link

- [http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/template.cfm?name=medallistsfrom1831_ Geological Society medal winners] Category:Science and engineering prizes Category:Geology

Geological Society of London

The Geological Society of London is a learned society based in the United Kingdom with the aim of "investigating the mineral structure of the Earth". It is the oldest geological society in the world. The Society was founded in 1807. It was partly the outcome of a previous club known as the Askesian Society, and among the more prominent founders were William Babington, Humphry Davy and George Bellas Greenough. It received its Royal Charter in 1825 from George IV. In 1831 it began issuing an annual scientific award for geology, known as the Wollaston Medal. Since 1874 the Society has been based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London. It is a member of the Science Council.

External link

- [http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/ The Geological Society] Category:Learned societies of the United Kingdom Category:Scientific societies

William Hyde Wollaston

:For the English philosophical writer, see William Wollaston. William Wollaston William Hyde Wollaston (August 6, 1766 – December 22, 1828) was an English chemist who is famous for discovering two chemical elements and for developing a way to process platinum ore.

Life

He was born in East Dereham, Norfolk and in 1793 obtained a doctorate in medicine from Cambridge University. During his studies there he became interested in chemistry, crystallography, metallurgy and physics. The mineral Wollastonite is named after him. In 1800 he left medicine and concentrated on pursing these interests instead of his trained vocation.

Work

Wollaston is perhaps best known as a chemist. He became wealthy by developing the first physico-chemical method for processing platinum ore in practical quantities, and in the process of testing the device he discovered the elements palladium (symbol Pd) in 1803 and rhodium (symbol Rh) in 1804. In 1809, he showed that niobium and titanium were elements (rather than compounds). He also performed important work in electricity. In 1801, he performed an experiment showing that the electricity from friction was identical to that produced by voltaic piles. During the last years of his life he performed electrical experiments that would pave the way to the eventual design of the electric motor. However, controversy erupted when Michael Faraday, who was undoubtedly the first to construct a working electrical motor, refused to grant Wollaston credit for his earlier work. His optical work was important as well, where he is remembered for his observations of dark Fraunhofer lines in the solar spectrum (1802) which eventually led to the discovery of the elements in the Sun. He also invented the camera lucida (1807), the reflecting goniometer (1809), and the Wollaston prism. He used his Bakerian lecture in 1805, On the Force of Percussion, to defend Gottfried Leibniz's principle of vis viva, an early formulation of the conservation of energy. He was too ill to deliver his final Bakerian in 1828 and dictated it to Henry Warburton who read it on November 20. He also served on a royal commission that opposed adoption of the metric system (1819), and one that created the imperial gallon.

Honours

- Fellow of the Royal Society, 1793;
- Secretary, 1804-1816;
- President, briefly in 1820.
- Royal Medal, 1828;
- The Wollaston Medal is named for him.

External links

- [http://www.stillwaterpalladium.com/ Palladium Discovery History Uses & Investments]
- [http://www.platinummetalsreview.com/dynamic/article/view/47-4-175-183 Rhodium and Palladium Events Surrounding Their Discoveries] Wollaston, William Hyde Wollaston, William Hyde Wollaston, William Hyde Wollaston, William Hyde Wollaston ja:ウイリアム・ウォラストン

Palladium

Palladium is a chemical element with symbol Pd and atomic number 46. A rare silver-white transition metal of the platinum group, palladium resembles platinum chemically and is extracted from some copper and nickel ores. It is primarily used as an industrial catalyst and in jewelry.

Notable characteristics

Palladium is a soft steel-white metal that resembles platinum, doesn't tarnish in air, and is the least dense and has the lowest melting point of the platinum group metals. It is soft and ductile when annealed and greatly increases its strength and hardness when it is cold-worked. Palladium is chemically attacked by sulfuric and nitric acid but dissolves slowly in hydrochloric acid. This metal also does not react with oxygen at normal temperatures. This metal has the uncommon ability to absorb up to 900 times its own volume of hydrogen at room temperatures. It is thought that this possibly forms palladium hydride - PdH₂ - but it is not yet clear if this is a true chemical compound. Common oxidation states of palladium are 0,+1, +2 and +4. Although originally +3 was thought of as one of the fundamental oxidation states of palladium, there is no evidence for palladium occuring in the +3 oxidation state; this has been investigated via X-Ray differaction for a number of compounds, indicating a dimer of Palladium(II) and Palladium(IV) instead. Recently, palladium compounds in which palladium has oxidation state +6 were synthesised.

Applications

When it is finely divided, palladium forms a good catalyst and is used to speed up hydrogenation and dehydrogenation reactions, as well as in petroleum cracking. A large number of reactions in organic chemistry are facilitated by palladium catalysis, many of which involve carbon-carbon bond formation. It is also alloyed and used in jewelry. Other uses;
- White gold is an alloy of gold that is decolourised by the addition of palladium.
- Similar to gold, palladium can be beaten into a thin leaf form as thin as 100 nm (1/250,000 in).
- Hydrogen easily diffuses through heated palladium; thus, it provides a means of purifying the gas.
- Telecommunications switching-system equipment uses palladium.
- Palladium is also used in dentistry, watch making, in aircraft spark plugs and in the production of surgical instruments and electrical contacts.
- It is also used as Palladium-Hydrogen electrode in electrochemical studies. Palladium dichloride can absorb large amounts of carbon monoxide gas and is used in carbon monoxide detectors

History

Palladium was discovered by William Hyde Wollaston in 1803. This element was named by Wollaston in 1804 after the asteroid Pallas, which was discovered two years earlier. Wollaston found element 46 in crude platinum ore from South America. He did this by dissolving the ore in aqua regia, neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide, Na OH, precipitating platinum as ammonium chloroplatinate through treatment with ammonium chloride, N H₄Cl, and then adding mercuric cyanide to form the compound palladium cyanide. Finally, he heated the resulting compound in order to extract palladium metal. The compound palladium chloride was at one time prescribed as a tuberculosis treatment at the rate of 0.065g per day (approximately one milligram per kilogram of body weight). This treatment did not have many negative side effects, but was later replaced by more effective drugs. The element played an essential role in the Fleischmann-Pons experiment, also known as cold fusion. In 2000, Ford Motor Company created a price bubble in palladium by stockpiling large amounts of the metal, fearing interrupted supplies from Russia. As prices fell in early 2001, Ford lost nearly $1 billion U.S. dollars.

Occurrence

Palladium is found as a free metal and alloyed with platinum and gold with platinum group metals in placer deposits of the Ural Mountains, Australia, Ethiopia, South and North America. However it is commercially produced from nickel-copper deposits found in South Africa and Ontario (the huge volume of ore processed makes this extraction profitable in spite of its low concentration in these ores). About the possibility of producing palladium in reactors or extracting it from spent nuclear fuel, see Synthesis of noble metals.

Isotopes

Naturally-occurring palladium is composed of six isotopes. The most stable radioisotopes are Pd-107 with a half-life of 6.5 million years, Pd-103 with a half-life of 17 days, and Pd-100 with a half-life of 3.63 days. Eighteen other radioisotopes have been characterized with atomic weights ranging from 92.936 u (Pd-93) to 119.924 u (Pd-120). Most of these have half-lifes that are less than a half an hour except Pd-101 (half-life: 8.47 hours), Pd-109 (half-life: 13.7 hours), and Pd-112 (half-life: 21 hours). The primary decay mode before the most abundant stable isotope, Pd-106, is electron capture and the primary mode after is beta decay. The primary decay product before Pd-106 is rhodium and the primary product after is silver. Radiogenic Ag-107 is a decay product of Pd-107 and was first discovered in the Santa Clara, California meteorite of 1978. The discoverers suggest that the coalescence and differentiation of iron-cored small planets may have occurred 10 million years after a nucleosynthetic event. Pd-107 versus Ag correlations observed in bodies, which have clearly been melted since accretion of the solar system, must reflect the presence of short-lived nuclides in the early solar system.

References

- [http://periodic.lanl.gov/elements/46.html Los Alamos National Laboratory – Palladium]

External links

- [http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Pd/index.html WebElements.com – Palladium]
- [http://www.stillwaterpalladium.com/ Palladium Discovery History Uses & Investments]
- [http://www.platinummetalsreview.com/dynamic/article/view/47-4-175-183 Palladium Events Surrounding Its Discovery]
- [http://www.platinummetalsreview.com/ Platinum Metals Review E-Journal]
- [http://www.platinummetalsreview.com/jmpgm/index.jsp The Platinum Group Metals Database]
- [http://www.rene-frank.com/English/palladiumtabeng.html Palladium Coins] Category:Chemical elements Category:Transition metals ja:パラジウム th:แพลเลเดียม

William Smith (geologist)

William Smith (March 23 1769–August 28 1839) was an English geologist. Smith is credited with creating the first nationwide geologic map and is known as the "Father of English Geology". However, recognition was slow in coming. His work was plagiarised, he was financially ruined, and spent time in debtors' prison. The genteel practitioners of the new science of geology and founders of the geological societies snubbed the low-born Smith. It was only much later in Smith's life that he received recognition for his accomplishments. Smith was born in the village of Churchill, Oxfordshire. In 1787, he found work as an assistant for Edward Webb of Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, a surveyor. He was quick to learn, and soon became proficient at the trade. In 1791, he travelled to Somerset to make a valuation survey of an estate. He stayed there for the next eight years, working first for Webb and later for the Somersetshire Coal Canal Company. Smith worked at one of the estate's older mines, the Mearns Pit at High Littleton. As he observed the strata at Mearns Pit he realised that the strata were arranged in a predictable pattern, and that the various strata could always be found in the same relative positions. Additionally, each particular stratum could be identified by the fossils it contained, and the same succession of fossil groups from older to younger rocks could be found in many parts of England. This gave Smith a testable hypothesis, which he termed the principle of faunal succession, and he began his search to determine if the relationships between the strata and their characteristics were consistent throughout the country. During his subsequent travels, first as a surveyor (appointed by noted engineer John Rennie) for the canal company until 1799 when he was dismissed, and later, he was continually taking samples and mapping the locations of the various strata. This was to earn him the name "Strata Smith". In 1799 Smith produced the first large scale geological map, of the area around Bath, Somerset. In 1815 he published the first geological map of any country. It covered the whole of England and Wales. Conventional signs were used to mark canals, tunnels, tramways and roads, collieries, lead, copper and tin mines, together with salt and alum works. In 1817 he drew a remarkable geological section from Snowdon to London. Unfortunately, Smith's maps were plagiarised and sold at prices lower than he was asking. He went into debt and finally became bankrupt. On August 31 1819 Smith was released from King's Bench Prison in London, a debtors' prison. He returned to his home of fourteen years at 15 Buckingham Street to find a bailiff at the door and his home and property seized. Smith then worked as an itinerent surveyor for many years until one of his employers, Sir John Johnstone, recognised Smith and took steps to give him the recognition he deserved. In February 1831 the Geological Society of London conferred on Smith the first Wollaston medal. It was on this occasion that the President, Adam Sedgwick, referred to Smith as "the Father of English Geology". He travelled to Dublin with the British Association in 1835, and there totally unexpectedly received an honorary Doctorate of Laws (LL.D.) In 1838 he was appointed as one of the commissioners to select building-stone for the new Palace of Westminster. He died in Northampton, and is buried in an unmarked grave a few feet from the west tower of St Peter's, Marefair. A crater on Mars is named after him. The Geological Society of London presents an annual lecture in his honour.

References

- Strata by John L Morton, New Edition, (2004, Brocken Spectre Publishing, Horsham) ISBN 0-9546829-1-2
- The Map That Changed the World, a biography of William Smith by Simon Winchester ISBN 0-140-28039-1
- Memoirs of William Smith by John Phillips, 1844, John Murray, London [republished with additional material by Hugh Torrens, 2003, Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, Bath ISBN 0-9544-9410-5].

1835

1835 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar).

Events

- January 1 – Ole Pedersen Hoiland breaks into the Bank of Norway and steals 64.000 dollars
- January 7 - HMS Beagle anchors off the Chonos Archipelago.
- January 30 - Unsuccessful assassination attempt against President Andrew Jackson in the United States Capitol - first assassination attempt against a President of the United States.
- February 20 - Concepción, Chile is destroyed by an earthquake
- March 2 - Ferdinand becomes Emperor of Austria.
- April 18 - Lord Melbourne succeeds Sir Robert Peel as British Prime Minister.
- The Australian city of Melbourne is founded by John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner.
- May 5 - In Belgium a railway is opened between Brussels and Mechelen. It is the first railway in continental Europe.
- May 6 - James Gordon Bennett, Sr. publishes the first issue of the New York Herald.
- June 2 - P.T. Barnum and his circus begins first tour of the U.S.
- July 4 - The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad completed construction of its Thomas Viaduct then the longest bridge in the United States, and second only to London Bridge in the world.
- August 25 - The Great Moon Hoax begins.
- September 7 – Charles Darwin arrives at Galapagos Islands aboard HMS Beagle
- October 2 - Texas Revolution begins: Battle of Gonzales - Mexican soldiers attempt to disarm the people of Gonzales, Texas but encounter stiff resistance from a hastily assembled militia.
- November 16 - Comet Halley reaches perihelion, it's closest approach to the sun.
- December 1 - Hans Christian Andersen publishes first book of fairy tales
- December 7 - First German Railway between Nürnberg and Fürth named "der Adler" (The Eagle)
- December 9 - The Army of the Republic of Texas captures San Antonio.
- December 16 - Fire in New York City destroys 530 buildings
- December 19 - Toledo Blade newspaper begins publishing.
- December 28 - Seminole chief Osceola and his warriors attack government agent Thompson outside Fort King in Central Florida - it means the outbreak of the Second Seminole War

Month/day unknown

- The Toledo War was fought between the State of Ohio and the Michigan Territory over the city of Toledo and the Toledo Strip.
- De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestum, Copernicus' book on the motion of the Earth, is removed from the Index of Prohibited Books.
- Samuel Colt patents the first revolver
- Civil war erupts in Uruguay between supporters of Blanco and Colorado parties
- Cachar Levy, forerunner of Assam Rifles, is founded in India
- The first Bulgarian-language school opens in the Ottoman Empire.
- The French word for their language changes to français, from françois
- Independent Order of Rechabites founded as part of temperance movement in U.S.

Births

- February 13 - Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, Punjabi Muslim reformer (d. 1908)
- February 15 - Demetrius Vikelas, Greek International Olympic Committee president (d. 1908)
- February 18 - César Cui, Lithuanian composer (d. 1918)
- March 14 - Giovanni Schiaparelli, Italian astronomer (d. 1910)
- March 15 - Eduard Strauss, Austrian composer (d. 1916)
- March 24 - Jožef Stefan, Slovenian physicist, mathematician, and poet (d. 1893)
- April 9 - King Léopold II of Belgium (d. 1909)
- May 3 - Alfred Austin, English poet (d. 1913)
- June 2 - Pope Pius X (d. 1914)
- July 7 - Ernest Giles, Australian explorer (d. 1897)
- July 10 - Henryk Wieniawski, Polish composer
- July 27 - Giosue Carducci, Italian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1907)
- August 2 - Elisha Gray, American inventor and businessman (d. 1901)
- October 7 - Felix Draeseke, German composer (d. 1913)
- October 9 - Camille Saint-Saëns, French composer (d. 1921)
- October 23 - Adlai E. Stevenson, Vice President of the United States (d. 1914)
- October 31 - Adolf von Baeyer, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1917)
- November 17 - Andrew L. Harris, American Civil War hero and Governor of Ohio (d. 1915)
- November 19 - Rani Lakshmi Bai, Indian freedom fighter (d. 1858)
- November 21 - Hetty Green, American businesswoman (d. 1916)
- November 25 - Andrew Carnegie, American industrialist and philanthropist (d. 1919)
- November 29 - Empress Dowager Cixi of China (d. 1908)
- November 30 - Mark Twain, American author and humorist (d. 1910)
- December 4 - Samuel Butler, English writer (d. 1902)
- December 18 - Lyman Abbott, American clergyman and author (d. 1922)

Deaths

- February 15 - Henry Hunt, British politician (b. 1773)
- March 2 - Emperor Francis I of Austria (b. 1768)
- March 18 - Christian Gunther von Bernstorff, Danish and Prussian statesman and diplomat (b. 1769)
- April 8 - Wilhelm von Humboldt, German linguist and philosopher (b. 1767)
- April 21 - Samuel Slater, American industrialist (b. 1768)
- May 13 - John Nash, English architect (b. 1752)
- June 18 - William Cobbett, English journalist and author (b. 1763)
- July 28 - Édouard Adolphe Casimir Joseph Mortier, French marshal (b. 1768)
- September 23 - Vincenzo Bellini, Italian composer (b. 1801) Category:1835 ko:1835년 ms:1835 simple:1835 th:พ.ศ. 2378

Gideon Mantell

Gideon Algernon Mantell (February 3, 1790 – November 10 1852) was an English obstetrician, geologist, and paleontologist. He is credited with discovering the first fossils identified as originating from a dinosaur, teeth belonging to an Iguanodon.

Giant iguana-like teeth

Gideon Mantell was born in Lewes, Sussex. He was a dedicated and hard-working obstetrician, physician and surgeon who regularly saw dozens of patients each day -- on one occasion he attended sixty in a single day during a typhus epidemic. Although mainly occupied with running his busy country medical practice in Lewes, he spent his little free time pursuing his passion, geology, often working into the early hours of the morning. Inspired by the sensational discovery of a fossilised animal resembling a huge crocodile (later identified as an ichthyosaur) by Mary Anning at Lyme Regis in Dorset, Mantell became passionately interested in the study of the fossilised animals and plants which were being found in the area. The fossils he had collected from the region known as The Weald in Sussex were from the chalk downlands covering the county. The chalk is part of the Upper Cretaceous ("chalk") period, and the fossils it contains are marine in origin. But by 1819, Mantell had begun acquiring fossils from a quarry at Whiteman's Green, near Cuckfield. These included the remains of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems at a time when all the known fossil remains from Cretaceous England were marine in origin. He named the new strata the Strata of Tilgate Forest, after an historical wooded area, and it was later shown to belong to the Lower Cretaceous. By 1820, he had started to find very large bones at Cuckfield, even larger than those discovered by William Buckland at Stonesfield in Oxfordshire. Then in 1822, shortly before finishing his first book (The Fossils of South Downs or Illustrations of the Geology of Sussex), he found several large teeth (although some historians contend that they were in fact discovered by his wife), the origin of which he could not identify. Mantell showed the teeth to other scientists but they were dismissed as belonging to a fish or mammal, and from a more recent rock layer than the other Tilgate Forest fossils. The eminent French anatomist Georges Cuvier identified the teeth as those of a rhinoceros. Mantell was convinced that the teeth had come from the Mesozoic strata, and finally recognized that they resembled those of the iguana, but were twenty times larger. He surmised that the owner of the remains must have been at least sixty feet (eighteen meters) in length.

Recognition

He tried in vain to convince his peers that the fossils were from Mesozoic strata by carefully studying rock layers. Sir Richard Owen famously disputed Mantell's assertion by claiming that the teeth were of mammalian origins. Years later, Mantell had acquired enough fossil evidence to show that the dinosaur's forelimbs were much shorter than its hind legs, therefore ruling out any mammal. Mantell went on to demonstrate that fossil vertebrae Owen had attributed to a variety of different species all belonged to Iguanodon. In 1825, Mantell published Notice on the Iguanodon, a Newly Discovered Fossil Reptile, from the Sandstone of Tilgate Forest, in Sussex. The paper was presented at a meeting of the Royal Society, and was met with acclaim. As a result, Mantell was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and an honorary member of the Institute of Paris. He was also awarded the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London and a Royal medal by the Royal Society.

Later years

In 1833 Mantell relocated to Brighton, but his medical practice suffered and he was almost rendered destitute, but for the town's council who promptly transformed his house into a museum. In 1839, Mary Mantell left her husband. That same year, Gideon's youngest son Walter emigrated to New Zealand. The museum in Brighton ultimately failed as a result of Mantell's habit of waiving the entrance fee. Finally destitute, Mantell sold the entire collection. Mantell suffered a terrible carriage accident and was left with a debilitating spinal injury. Despite being bent over with crippling deformity and in constant pain, he continued to work with fossilized reptiles, and published a number of scientific books and papers until his death.

Death and remembrance

In 1852, Mantell took an overdose of opium, the drug he used to alleviate his pain, and later lapsed into a coma. He died that afternoon. His postmortem showed that he had been suffering from scoliosis. Richard Owen, his one-time nemesis, had a section of Mantell's spine removed, pickled and stored on a shelf at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. There it sat until World War II when it was lost, presumably destroyed, during a German bombing raid. In 2000, in commemoration of Mantell's discovery and his contribution to the science of paleontology, The Mantell Monument was unveiled at Whiteman's Green, Cuckfield. The monument has been confirmed as the location of the Iguanodon fossils Mantell first described in 1822. Mantell, Gideon Mantell, Gideon Mantell, Gideon Mantell, Gideon Mantell, Gideon

Louis Agassiz

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (May 28 1807-December 14 1873) was a Swiss-born American zoologist, glaciologist, and geologist, the husband of educator Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz, and one of the first world-class American scientists.

Early life and education

Louis Agassiz was born in Môtiers in Neuchâtel canton, Switzerland. Educated first at home, then spending four years of secondary school in Bienne, he completed his elementary studies in Lausanne. Having adopted medicine as his profession, he studied successively at the universities of Zürich, Heidelberg and Munich; while there he extended his knowledge of natural history, especially of botany. In 1829 he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Erlangen, and in 1830 that of doctor of medicine at Munich. Moving to Paris he fell under the tutelage of Alexander von Humboldt and Georges Cuvier, who launched him on his careers of geology and zoology respectively. Until shortly before this time he had paid no special attention to the study of ichthyology, which soon afterwards became the great occupation of his life, if not the one for which he is most remembered in the modern day. Agassiz always declared that he was led into ichthyological pursuits through the following circumstances:

Early work

In 1819-1820, Johann Baptist von Spix and Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius were engaged in an expedition to Brazil, and on their return to Europe, amongst other collections of natural objects they brought home an important set of the fresh water fishes of Brazil, and especially of the Amazon River. Spix, who died in 1826, did not live long enough to work out the history of these fishes, and Agassiz (though fresh out of school) was selected by Martius for this purpose. He at once threw himself into the work with an enthusiasm which characterized him to the end of his busy life. The task of describing the Brazilian fishes was completed and published in 1829. This was followed by research into the history of the fishes found in Lake Neuchâtel. Enlarging his plans, in 1830 he issued a prospectus of a History of the Freshwater Fishes of Central Europe. It was only in 1839, however, that the first part of this publication appeared, and it was completed in 1842. In 1832 he was appointed professor of natural history in the university of Neuchâtel. The fossil fishes there soon attracted his attention. The rich stores furnished by the slates of Glarus and the limestones of Monte Bolca were known at the time, but very little had been accomplished in the way of scientific study of them. Agassiz, as early as 1829, planned the publication of the work which, more than any other, laid the foundation of his world-wide fame. Five volumes of his Recherches sur les poissons fossiles ("Research on Fossil Fishes") appeared at intervals from 1833 to 1843. They were magnificently illustrated, chiefly by Joseph Dinkel. In gathering materials for this work Agassiz visited the principal museums in Europe, and meeting Cuvier in Paris, he received much encouragement and assistance from him. Agassiz found that his palaeontological labours made necessary a new basis of ichthyological classification. The fossils rarely exhibited any traces of the soft tissues of fishes. They consisted chiefly of the teeth, scales and fins, even the bones being perfectly preserved in comparatively few instances. He therefore adopted a classification which divided fishes into four groups: Ganoids, Placoids, Cycloids and Ctenoids, based on the nature of the scales and other dermal appendages. While Agassiz did much to place the subject on a scientific basis, this classification has been superseded by later work. As Agassiz's descriptive work proceeded, it became obvious that it would over-tax his resources unless financial assistance could be found. The British Association came to his aid, and the earl of Ellesmere -- then Lord Francis Egerton -- gave him yet more efficient help. The 1,290 original drawings made for the work were purchased by the Earl, and presented by him to the Geological Society of London. In 1836 the Wollaston medal was awarded to Agassiz by the council of that society for his work on fossil ichthyology; and in 1838 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society. Meanwhile invertebrate animals engaged his attention. In 1837 he issued the "Prodrome" of a monograph on the recent and fossil Echinodermata, the first part of which appeared in 1838; in 1839-1840 he published two quarto volumes on the fossil Echinoderms of Switzerland; and in 1840-1845 he issued his Etudes critiques sur les mollusques fossiles ("Critical Studies on Fossil Mollusks"). Before his first visit to England in 1834, the labours of Hugh Miller and other geologists brought to light the remarkable fishes of the Old Red Sandstone of the north-east of Scotland. The strange forms of the Pterichthys, the Coccosteus and other genera were then made known to geologists for the first time. They were of intense interest to Agassiz, and formed the subject of a special monograph by him published in 1844-1845: Monographie des poissons fossiles du Vieux Gres Rouge, ou Systeme Devonien (Old Red Sandstone) des Iles Britanniques et de Russie ("Monograph on Fossil Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone, or Devonian System of the British Isles and of Russia"). In the early stages of his career in Neuchatel, Agassiz also made a name for himself as a man who could run a scientific department well. Under his care, the University of Neuchâtel soon became a leading institution for scientific inquiry.

Proposal of an ice age

1845 In 1837 Agassiz was the first to scientifically propose that the Earth had been subject to a past ice age. Prior to this de Saussure, Venetz, Charpentier and others had made the glaciers of the Alps the subjects of special study, and Charpentier had even arrived at the conclusion that the erratic blocks of alpine rocks scattered over the slopes and summits of the Jura mountains had been moved there by glaciers. The question having attracted the attention of Agassiz, he not only made successive journeys to the alpine regions in company with Charpentier, but he had a hut constructed upon one of the Aar glaciers, which for a time he made his home, in order to investigate the structure and movements of the ice. These labours resulted, in 1840, in the publication of his work in two volumes entitled Etudes sur les glaciers ("Study on Glaciers"). In it he discussed the movements of the glaciers, their moraines, their influence in grooving and rounding the rocks over which they travelled, and in producing the striations and roches moutonnees seen in Alpine-style landscapes. He not only accepted Charpentier's idea that some of the alpine glaciers had extended across the wide plains and valleys drained by the Aar and the Rhône, but he went still farther. He concluded that, in the relatively recent past, Switzerland had been another Greenland; that instead of a few glaciers stretching across the areas referred to, one vast sheet of ice, originating in the higher Alps, had extended over the entire valley of northwestern Switzerland until it reached the southern slopes of the Jura, which, though they checked and deflected its further extension, did not prevent the ice from reaching in many places the summit of the range. The publication of this work gave a fresh impetus to the study of glacial phenomena in all parts of the world. Thus familiarized with the phenomena associated with the movements of recent glaciers, Agassiz was prepared for a discovery which he made in 1840, in conjunction with William Buckland. The two visited the mountains of Scotland together, and found in different locations clear evidence of ancient glacial action. The discovery was announced to the Geological Society of London in successive communications. The mountainous districts of England, Wales, and Ireland were also considered to constitute centres for the dispersion of glacial debris; and Agassiz remarked "that great sheets of ice, resembling those now existing in Greenland, once covered all the countries in which unstratified gravel (boulder drift) is found; that this gravel was in general produced by the trituration of the sheets of ice upon the subjacent surface, etc."

Relocation to the United States

In 1842-1846 he issued his Nomenclator Zoologicus, a classified list, with references, of all names employed in zoology for genera and groups--a work of great labour and research. With the aid of a grant of money from the king of Prussia, Agassiz crossed the Atlantic in the autumn of 1846 with the twin purposes of investigating the natural history and geology of the United States and delivering a course of lectures on zoology, by invitation from J. A. Lowell, at the Lowell Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. The financial and scientific advantages presented to him in North America induced him to settle in the United States, where he remained to the end of his life. He was appointed professor of zoology and geology at Harvard University in 1847. In 1852 he accepted a medical professorship of comparative anatomy at Charlestown, Massachusetts, but he resigned in two years. From this time his scientific studies dropped off, but he was a profound influence on the American branches of his two fields, teaching decades worth of future prominent scientists, including David Starr Jordan, Joel Asaph Allen, Joseph Le Conte, Nathaniel Shaler, Alpheus Packard, and his son Alexander Agassiz, among others. He had a profound impact on the paleontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott. In return his name appears attached to several species, as well as here and there throughout the American landscape, notably Lake Agassiz, the Pleistocene precursor to Lake Winnipeg and the Red River. He was also responsible for building up the Museum of Natural History at Cambridge, and was an early studier of the effect of the last Ice Age on North America. During this time he grew in fame even in the public consciousness, becoming one of the best-known scientists in the world. By 1857 he was so well-loved that Longfellow wrote "The fiftieth birthday of Agassiz" in his honour. His own writing continued with four volumes of Natural History of the United States which were published from 1857 to 1862. During this time he also published a catalog of papers in his field, Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae, in four volumes between 1848 and 1854. Stricken by ill health in the 1860s, he resolved to return to the field partly for relaxation, and partly to take up his studies of Brazilian fishes once again. In April 1865 he led a party to Brazil. Returning home in August 1866, an account of this expedition, entitled A Journey in Brazil, was published in 1868. In 1871 he made a second excursion, visiting the southern shores of North America, both on its Atlantic and its Pacific seaboards.

Legacies

In 1863, Agassiz' daughter Ida married Henry Lee Higginson, later to be founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and benefactor to Harvard University and other schools. In the last years of his life, Agassiz worked to establish a permanent school where zoological science could be pursued amid the living subjects of its study. In 1873 a private philanthropist (John Anderson) gave Agassiz the island of Penikese, in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts (south of New Bedford), and presented him with $50,000 to permanently endow it as a practical school of natural science, especially devoted to the study of marine zoology. The John Anderson school collapsed soon after Agassiz's death, but is considered a precursor of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which is nearby. Agassiz is remembered today for his work on ice ages, and for being one of the last major zoologists to resist Charles Darwin's theories on evolution (an attitude he would not relinquish for the rest of his life). He passed away in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1873. He was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery. His monument is a boulder selected from the moraine of the glacier of the Aar near the site of the old Hotel des Neuchatelois, not far from the spot where his hut once stood; and the pine-trees which shelter his grave were sent from his old home in Switzerland. The Cambridge elementary school north of Harvard University was named in his honor and the surrounding neighborhood became known as "Agassiz" as a result. However, the school's name was changed to the Maria L. Baldwin school on May 21, 2002, in honor of the African-American principal of the school who served from 1889 until 1922. The neighborhood, however, continues to be known as Agassiz. [http://www.cambridgema.gov/~CDD/cp/neigh/8/agassiz_ns_3.pdf] Lake Agassiz is named after him, as well as several animal species, such as Apistogramma agassizi (Agassiz's dwarf cichlid), Isocapnia agassizi (Agassiz Snowfly), and Gopherus agassizi (Desert Tortoise). A crater on Mars and a promontorium (cape like feature) on the Moon are named in his honour.

Works

- Recherches sur les poissons fossiles (1833-1843)
- History of the Freshwater Fishes of Central Europe (1839-1842)
- Etudes sur les glaciers (1840)
- Etudes critiques sur les mollusques fossiles (1840-1845)
- Nomenclator Zoologicus (1842-1846)
- Monographie des poissons fossiles du Vieux Gres Rouge, ou Systeme Devonien (Old Red Sandstone) des Iles Britanniques et de Russie (1844-1845)
- Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae (1848)
- (with AA Gould) Principles of Zoology for the use of Schools and Colleges (Boston, 1848)
- Lake Superior: Its Physical Character, Vegetation and Animals, compared with those of other and similar regions (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1850)
- Natural History of the United States (1847-1862)
- A Journey in Brazil (1868)

Reference

- Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science (Johns Hopkins University Press, reprint 1988) ISBN 0-8018-3743-X

External links

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- [http://www.famousamericans.net/jeanlouisrudolpheagassiz Bibliography of Agassiz] Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, Louis Category:Glaciologists

1837

1837 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar).

Events

- January 10 - DePauw University founded in Greencastle, Indiana
- January 26 - Michigan is admitted as the 26th U.S. state
- February 8 - Richard Johnson becomes the first Vice President of the United States chosen by the United States Senate
- February 11 - American Physiological Society organizes in Boston
- February 13 - Rowland Hill at a UK government inquiry into postal reform discloses the idea of carrying letters in a separate sheet which folded to become an envelope and the idea of "a bit of paper" which could be affixed to a letter to flag that postage had been paid.
- February 15 - Knox College founded in Galesburg, Illinois
- February 25 - First US electric printing press patented by Thomas Davenport
- March 4 - Martin Van Buren succeeds Andrew Jackson as the President of the United States of America.
- March 4 - Chicago is granted a city charter by Illinois.
- May 10 - Panic of 1837 (Global economic crisis): New York City banks fail, and unemployment reaches record levels.
- June 3 - The London Hippodrome opens in Bayswater
- June 5 - The city of Houston, Texas is granted a city charter. charter
- June 20 - Queen Victoria, monarch of the United Kingdom ascends to the throne
- June 30 - England abolishes the use of pillory
- July 13 - Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom moves into the first Buckingham Palace in London and is the first British monarch to live there.
- July 20 - Euston Station, London's first railway stations, is opened
- July 29 - Spanish government auctions the church property
- August 16 - Dutch sack of the fortress of Bonjol, ending the Padri War
- October 21 - General Thomas Jessup captures Osceola in pretext of negotiations
- November 7 - In Alton, Illinois, abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy is shot to death by a mob (supporters of slavery) while he was attempting to protect his printing shop from being destroyed a third time.
- December 4 - Date of the Confrontation at Montgomery's Tavern.
- November 8 - Formation of Mount Holyoke Seminary, first US college founded for women

Unknown date

- In the United States, financial crisis and economic depression begun by the Panic of 1837.
- In the Canadas, William Lyon Mackenzie leads the Upper Canada Rebellion and Louis-Joseph Papineau leads the Lower Canada Rebellion.
- Samuel Morse patents telegraph
- Great_Moon_Hoax – New York Sun claims that astronomer John Herschel has found life in the Moon
- British Piracy Act

Births

- January 2 - Mily Balakirev, Russian composer (d. 1910)
- February 5 - Dwight L. Moody, American evangelist (d. 1899)
- March 1 - William Dean Howells, American writer, historian, editor, and politician. (d. 1920)
- March 7 - Henry Draper, American physician and astronomer (d. 1882)
- March 18 - Grover Cleveland, President of the United States (d. 1908)
- March 23 - Charles Wyndham, English actor and theatrical manager (d. 1919)
- April 5 - Algernon Charles Swinburne, English poet (d. 1909)
- April 17 - John Pierpont Morgan, American financier and banker (d. 1913)
- April 21 - Fredrik Bajer, Danish politician and pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1922)
- May 9 - Adam Opel, German engineer and industrialist (d. 1895)
- May 27 - Wild Bill Hickok, American gunfighter (d. 1876)
- June 22 - Paul Morphy, American chess player (d. 1884)
- June 22 - Paul Bachmann, German mathematician (d. 1920)
- July 4 - Carolus-Duran, French painter (d. 1917)
- August 24 - Théodore Dubois, French composer (d. 1924)
- November 14 - Lucas Barrett, English naturalist (d. 1862)
- November 23 - Johannes Diderik van der Waals, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1923)
- December 26 - George Dewey, U.S. naval officer (d. 1917)
- Osman Pasha, Turkish general and statesman (d. 1900)
- Sarah Lockwood Pardee, American builder of the Winchester Mystery House (d. 1922)

Deaths

- January 20 - John Soane, British architect (b. 1753)
- January 23 - John Field, Irish composer (b. 1782)
- February 7 - Gustav IV Adolf, ex-King of Sweden (b. 1778)
- February 10 - Alexander Pushkin, Russian author (b. 1799)
- February 19, Georg Büchner, German playwright (b. 1813)
- March 31 - John Constable, English painter (b. 1776)
- April 28 - Joseph Souham, French general (b. 1760)
- June 14 - Giacomo Leopardi, Italian writer (b. 1798)
- June 20 - King William IV of the United Kingdom (b. 1765)
- October 5 - Hortense de Beauharnais, Queen of Holland and mother of Napoleon III of France (b. 1783)
- November 7 - Elijah P. Lovejoy, American abolitionist (b. 1809)
- December 13 - Saint Herman of Alaska Category:1837 ko:1837년 ms:1837 simple:1837 th:พ.ศ. 2380

1837

1837 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar).

Events

Unknown date

Births

Deaths

- January 20 - John Soane, British architect (b. 1753)
- January 23 - John Field, Irish composer (b. 1782)
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Wollaston Medal

Laureates

1831

1850

1900

1950

2000

See also

External link

Geological Society of London

See also

External link

William Hyde Wollaston

Life

Work

Honours

External links

Palladium

Notable characteristics

Applications

History

Occurrence

Isotopes

References

External links

William Smith (geologist)

References

See also

1835

Events

Month/day unknown

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Gideon Mantell

Giant iguana-like teeth

Recognition

Later years

Death and remembrance

Louis Agassiz

Early life and education

Early work

Proposal of an ice age

Relocation to the United States

Legacies

Works

Reference

External links

1837

Events

Unknown date

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Deaths

1837

Events

Unknown date

Births

Deaths