Sedgwick

Sedgwick, ADAM, for more than fifty years Woodward professor of Geology at Cambridge, was born at Dent in Yorkshire in 1785, graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1808, and for the next ten years lectured as a Fellow of his college. He was then elected professor of Geology (1818); and in the following year, on the foundation of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, he was chosen one of its secretaries. For many years he took an active part in the discussions of the Geological Society of London, of which he was president in the years 1829 to 1831. Most of his writings were couched in the form of papers contributed to the Transactions of these two societies. His best and most successful labour was expended upon the investigation of the palæozoic and crystalline rocks; and his longest work was a dissertation on British Palæozoic Rocks and Fossils (Lond. 1851-52). Along with Murchison (q.v.) he made a systematic study of the geology of the Alps, and of the Devonian system in England. Although he did admirable service in establishing geology on a thoroughly scientific basis, Sedgwick was in other regards firmly rooted in distinctively conservative ideas: he made a trenchant attack upon The Vestiges of Creation in the Edinburgh Review, and put himself in strong opposition to Darwin's Origin of Species. He was canon of Norwich Cathedral from 1834, and for some years held the office of vice-master of his college. His death occurred at Cambridge, on 25th January 1873. In 1890 appeared 2 vols. of his Life and Letters; in 1891 it was resolved to build at Cambridge a Sedgwick Memorial Geological Museum.