Geology

Beginnings

GeoScience was first taught in Edinburgh under the title of Natural History. Professors included Robert Ramsay (fl1757-1779), John Walker (1731-1803) and Robert Jameson (1774-1854) (who held the Chair for fifty years. When George James Allman (1812-1898) was about to retire, the University received a letter from Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (1792-1871), Director of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom, proposing that the Chair of Natural History to be divided, in order to create a separate Chair of Geology. To this end he offered to provide an endowment of £6,000.

The next day, the University received a further letter from Murchison, in which he added that the endowment was conditional on him being the person to nominate the new Chair of Geology. The University then wrote to the Treasury asking for a grant of £200 per annum to make the Chair viable. The Treasury replied that they were prepared to provide this sum on condition that Murchison's clause regarding nomination be deleted.

In March 1871, Archibald Geikie presented his commission to the Senatus Academicus, as the holder of the first Regius Chair of Geology. At that time Archibald Geikie was the President of the Edinburgh Geological Society and, coincidentally, Sir Roderick Murchison was its patron. One way or another, Murchison got his own way. Geikie was succeeded by his younger brother James Geikie (1839-1915) in 1882.

Location

The Geology Department was located in Old College until 1932, when it moved to King's Buildings. Its new home was named The Grant Institute, in recognition of an endowment from Sir Alexander Grant of Forres (£50,000 in 1929), and was opened by his friend, Prime Minister James Ramsay Macdonald, on 28 January, 1932. In the 1980s the John Murray Laboratories were annexed. The building houses staff and equipment involved in research in oceanography, climate change, fluid flow in porous media, pollution and similar environmental problems. Additional staff in these disciplines, are housed in the nearby Crew Building.

Geophysics

The Department of Geophysics was inaugurated in 1969 with Alan H. Cook as the first Professor of Geophysics. He was succeeded by Ken Creer in 1973. Prof Kathy Whaler, the current holder of the Chair of Geophysics, joined the Department in 1994.

The Department of Geophysics was initially housed in a Victorian villa in South Oswald Road. From there it moved to the James Clerk Maxwell Building.