The Greywacke

How a Priest, a Soldier and a School Teacher Uncovered 300 Million Years of History

Nick Davidson

• Publisher: Profile Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781788163781, 9781788163774
• eBook ISBN: 9781782836261
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geology & Earth Sciences

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE PRIZE 2022 'A joyful collision of science, history and nature writing' Helen Gordon, author of Notes from Deep Time Adam Sedgwick was a priest and scholar. Roderick Murchison was a retired soldier. Charles Lapworth was a schoolteacher. It was their personal and intellectual rivalry, pursued on treks through Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, Devon and parts of western Russia, that revealed the narrative structure of the Paleozoic Era, the 300-million-year period during which life on Earth became recognisably itself. Nick Davidson follows in their footsteps and draws on maps, diaries, letters, field notes and contemporary accounts to bring the ideas and characters alive. But this is more than a history of geology. As we travel through some of the most spectacular scenery in Britain, it's a celebration of the sheer visceral pleasure generations of geologists have found, and continue to find, in noticing the earth beneath our feet.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The Erratic Professor Sedgwick
• 2 The Ambitious Mr Murchison
• 3 Trekking through Wales, 1832–3
• 4 A New History: the Cambrian and Silurian, 1834–5
• 5 The Devonian Controversy, 1835–40
• 6 Stumbling on the Permian in Russia, 1840–42
• 7 Siluria v. Cambria, 1841–52
• 8 From Collaboration to Rivalry, 1852–5
• 9 The Highland Controversy: Siluria in Scotland, 1855–73
• 10 The Missing Key: Discovery of the Ordovician, 1864–84
• 11 The Final Mystery
• Glossary
• Notes
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements