Geology

In 1871, Archibald Geikie was appointed as the first holder of the Regius Chair of Geology.

Beginnings

GeoScience was first taught in Edinburgh under the heading of Natural History. Notable professors included Robert Ramsay (1735–1778), John Walker (1731-1803) and Robert Jameson (1774-1854) (who held the Chair for fifty years). In 1870, Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (1792-1871), Director of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom, proposing that the Chair of Natural History be divided via the creation of a discreet Chair of Geology. To this end he offered to provide an endowment of £6,000 on condition that he was permitted to nominate the first holder (patronage subsequently reverting to the Crown).

The first holder, as nominated by Murchison, wasArchibald Geikie, President of the Edinburgh Geological Society. He 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.