Geological Society of London

Last updated
Geological Society of London
Formation13 November 1807;216 years ago (1807-11-13)
Founded at Freemasons Tavern, Great Queen Street
London, WC2
Type Learned society
Registration no.210161
Headquarters Burlington House, Piccadilly
London, W1
Coordinates 51°30′32″N0°8′22″W / 51.50889°N 0.13944°W / 51.50889; -0.13944
Membership
12,000
Website www.geolsoc.org.uk
The Geological Society offices in Burlington House, Piccadilly, London Geological Society of London.jpg
The Geological Society offices in Burlington House, Piccadilly, London

The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, [1] is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe, with more than 12,000 Fellows.

Contents

Fellows are entitled to the postnominal FGS (Fellow of the Geological Society), over 2,000 of whom are Chartered Geologists (CGeol). The Society is a registered charity, no. 210161. It is also a member of the Science Council, and is licensed to award Chartered Scientist to qualifying members.

The mission of the society is: "Making geologists acquainted with each other, stimulating their zeal, inducing them to adopt one nomenclature, facilitating the communication of new facts and ascertaining what is known in their science and what remains to be discovered". [2]

History

The Society was founded on 13 November 1807 at the Freemasons' Tavern, Great Queen Street, in the Covent Garden district of London. [3] It was partly the outcome of a previous club known as the Askesian Society. There were 13 founder members: William Babington, James Parkinson, Humphry Davy, George Bellas Greenough, Arthur Aikin, William Allen, Jacques Louis, Comte de Bournon, Richard Knight, James Laird, James Franck, William Haseldine Pepys, Richard Phillips, and William Phillips. It received its royal charter on 23 April 1825 from George IV.

Since 1874, the Society has been based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London. This building houses the Society's library, which contains more than 300,000 volumes of books and journals. [4] It is a member of the UK Science Council.

Women were first allowed to become Fellows of the Society in 1919. [5] [6]

In 1991, it merged with the Institution of Geologists, which had been formed in 1977 to represent the geological profession. [7]

The Society is a member of the European Federation of Geologists.

The Society celebrated its bicentenary in 2007. It ran programmes in the geosciences in Britain and abroad, under the auspices of the science writer and palaeontologist Professor Richard Fortey, the president that year.

Specialist and regional groups

The Society has 24 specialist groups and 15 regional groups which serve as an opportunity for those with specific interests to meet and discuss their subject or region. They are all free for members to join and some are open to non-members. [8] [9]

The Regional Groups are:

The Specialist Groups are:

Publications

The society publishes two of its own journals, the (formerly Quarterly) Journal of the Geological Society and the Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology & Hydrogeology . It also publishes the magazine Geoscientist for Fellows, and has a share in Geology Today , published by Blackwell Science.

It also co-publishes journals and publishes on behalf of other organisations. These include Petroleum Geoscience with the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers; Geochemistry: Exploration, Environment, Analysis with the Association of Applied Geochemists; Journal of Micropalaeontology for The Micropalaeontological Society; Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society for the Yorkshire Geological Society; and Scottish Journal of Geology for the Geological Societies of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Past presidents

The society counts many famous geologists amongst its past presidents. These include pioneers of geology William Buckland, Adam Sedgwick, Roderick Impey Murchison, Charles Lyell, Henry Thomas De la Beche, Thomas Henry Huxley, Joseph Prestwich, Archibald Geikie, Jethro Teall, and Charles Lapworth. Later well-known names include Alfred Harker, Arthur Elijah Trueman, Herbert Harold Read, Frederick Shotton, and Janet Watson.

Scientific awards and funds

In 1831, it began issuing an annual scientific award for geology, known as the Wollaston Medal. This is still the Society's premier medal, which in 2006 was awarded to James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia hypothesis.

Medals awarded by the Society

Funds administered by the Society

Bibliography

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roderick Murchison</span> British geologist (1792–1871)

Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 1st Baronet, was a Scottish geologist who served as director-general of the British Geological Survey from 1855 until his death in 1871. He is noted for investigating and describing the Silurian, Devonian and Permian systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Henry Fitton</span> British geologist (1780–1861)

William Henry Fitton was an Irish physician and amateur geologist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Union of Geological Sciences</span> International non-governmental organization

The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) is an international non-governmental organization devoted to international cooperation in the field of geology. As of 2023, it represents more than 1 million geoscientists around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">W. Jason Morgan</span> American geophysicist (1935–2023)

William Jason Morgan was an American geophysicist who made seminal contributions to the theory of plate tectonics and geodynamics. He retired as the Knox Taylor Professor emeritus of geology and professor of geosciences at Princeton University. He served as a visiting scholar in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University until his death.

Horace Bolingbroke Woodward, was a British geologist who participated in the Geological Survey of England and Wales from 1867 until his retirement in 1908. He was vice-president of the Geological Society, where he was elected a Fellow in 1868; elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1896, awarded the Murchison Medal in 1897, and the Wollaston Medal in 1909.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clement Reid</span> British geologist and palaeobotanist

Clement Reid FRS was a British geologist and palaeobotanist.

The Geological Association of Canada (GAC) is a learned society that promotes and develops the geological sciences in Canada. The organization holds conferences, meetings and exhibitions for the discussion of geological problems and the exchange of views in matters related to geology. It publishes various journals and collections of learned papers dealing with geology.

Women in geology concerns the history and contributions of women to the field of geology. There has been a long history of women in the field, but they have tended to be under-represented. In the era before the eighteenth century, science and geological science had not been as formalized as they would become later. Hence early geologists tended to be informal observers and collectors, whether they were male or female. Notable examples of this period include Hildegard of Bingen who wrote works concerning stones and Barbara Uthmann who supervised her husband's mining operations after his death. Mrs. Uthmann was also a relative of Georg Agricola. In addition to these names varied aristocratic women had scientific collections of rocks or minerals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raymond A. Price</span> Canadian geologist

Raymond Alexander Price, is a Canadian geologist. He has used his research on the structure and tectonics of North America’s lithosphere to produce extensive geological maps. He has also provided guidance for nuclear fuel waste disposal and reports on the human contribution to Global warming.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ramsay Traquair</span> Scottish palaeoichthyologist (1840–1912)

Ramsay Heatley Traquair FRSE FRS was a Scottish naturalist and palaeontologist who became a leading expert on fossil fish.

John R. Underhill is Professor of Stratigraphy and Director of the Centre for Energy Transition at Aberdeen University, Scotland. He was a football referee in the Scottish Premier League, until mandatory age retiral in 2008 and was on the FIFA panel of referees.

Edward Howel Francis, BSc, DSc, FRSE, FGS was a British geologist and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Leeds. He was President of the Geological Society of London from 1980 to 1982.

Sharon Mosher is an American geologist. She did her undergraduate work at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. After earning an MSc from Brown University, she returned to the University of Illinois to get her PhD in Geology in 1978. Since 2001 she has held the William Stamps Farish Chair at University of Texas, and, since 2009 she has served as the dean of the Jackson School of Geosciences at Texas. In 2013 she became the president of the American Geosciences Institute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Clough (geologist)</span> British geologist and mapmaker

Charles Thomas Clough MA, LLD, FGS, FRSE was a prominent British geologist and mapmaker. The Edinburgh Geological Society named the Clough Medal in his honour.

Eric William Wolff, FRS is a British climatologist, glaciologist, and academic. Since 2013, he has been Royal Society Research Professor of Earth Sciences in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

Eleanor Mary Reid (1860–1953) was a British palaeobotanist. Throughout her life she worked closely with her husband, Clement Reid, a trained botanist and geologist, and later worked alongside Marjorie Chandler.

Marjorie Wilson is an English geologist and petrologist known for her formative work on the origin of igneous rocks. Her most significant book is Igneous Petrogenesis: A Global Tectonic Approach, published in 1989. The book was reprinted in 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Jackson (geologist)</span> UK academic and geologist

Christopher Aiden-Lee Jackson is a British geoscientist, science communicator and Director of Sustainable Geoscience at Jacobs Engineering Group. He was previously Professor of Sustainable Geoscience at the University of Manchester, and before that held the Equinor Chair of Basin Analysis at Imperial College, London. He is known for his work in geoscience, especially in the use of 3D seismic data to understand dynamic processes in sedimentary basins.

Marilyn J. Suiter is a geologist whose professional career has spanned teaching, working the oil and gas industry and public services. In her leadership roles at both the American Geosciences Institute and the National Science Foundation, Suiter has worked over decades to increase the ethnic diversity of the geosciences.

References

  1. The Geological Society Archived 2010-08-17 at the Wayback Machine , UK.
  2. Andrew Scott,Stephen Pumfrey, Leucha Veneer (12 April 2012). "Early Geology". In our time. 1 minutes in. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 16 September 2012.
  3. Herries Davies, G.L. (2007) Whatever is Under the Earth: The Geological Society of London 1807 to 2007, London: Geological Society
  4. The Geological Society, UK.
  5. Hunter, Dana (2019-03-19). "Geological Society of London Celebrates the First Female Fellows". Scientific American Blog Network. Retrieved 2019-03-27.
  6. Burek, Cynthia V. (2009-08-21). "The first female Fellows and the status of women in the Geological Society of London". Geological Society, London, Special Publications. 317 (1): 373–407. Bibcode:2009GSLSP.317..373B. doi:10.1144/SP317.21. S2CID   128719787 . Retrieved 2019-03-27.
  7. Brassington, R. "The Institution of Geologists - A Brief History". The Geological Society, London. Archived from the original on 14 March 2012. Retrieved 16 May 2010.
  8. "Regional Groups". The Geological Society of London. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
  9. "Specialist Groups". The Geological Society of London. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
  10. "Dewey Medal". The Geological Society of London. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
  11. "Distinguished Service Award". The Geological Society of London. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
  12. 1 2 "The Major John Sacheverell A'Deane Coke and Major Edward D'Ewes Fitzgerald Coke Medals". The Geological Society of London. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
  13. "President's Awards". The Geological Society of London. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
  14. "R H Worth Award". The Geological Society of London. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
  15. "Lyell Fund". The Geological Society of London. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
  16. "Wollaston Fund". The Geological Society of London. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
  17. "William Smith Fund". The Geological Society of London. Retrieved 2023-03-14.