Croll, JAMES, physicist, was born in 1821 near Coupar-Angus, in Perthshire. He received an elementary school-education, but in science was wholly self-trained. Successively millwright, insurance-agent, and keeper of the museum of Anderson's College, Glasgow, in 1867 he joined the staff of the
Geological Survey of Scotland, but retired in 1881. An F.R.S. and LL.D. since 1876, he died 15th December 1890 (see his Life by J. C. Irons, 1896). Besides many papers in the scientific journals, he wrote The Philosophy of Theism (1857), Climate and Time (1875), Discussions on Climate and Cosmology (1886), and Stellar Evolution (1889). Climate and Time, one of the most important contributions to geological climatology, worked out in detail the view with which Croll's name is identified, that, contrary to the opinion of most physicists, changes of the earth's climate, such as the glacial periods, are due to the secular variations in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, together with consequences arising out of them, such as the deflection of ocean currents. See CLIMATE, GLACIAL PERIOD, PRECESSION.