George Bellas Greenough
| George Bellas Greenough | |
|---|---|
Portrait by Maxim Gauci
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|
| Born |
18 January 1778 London |
| Died | 2 April 1855 (aged 77) |
| Nationality | English |
| Fields | Geology |
| Alma mater |
Pembroke Hall, Cambridge University of Göttingen |
| Academic advisors | Johann Friedrich Blumenbach |
| Influences | Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Jean-André Deluc |
George Bellas Greenough FRS FGS (18 January 1778 – 2 April 1855) was a pioneering English geologist. He is best known as a synthesizer of geology rather than as an original researcher. Trained as a lawyer, he was a talented speaker and his annual addresses as founding president of the Geological Society of London were influential in identifying and guiding contemporary geological research. He compiled a geological map of England and Wales in 1819, shortly after Smith's 1815 map, and in the last year of his life, produced the first geological map of British India. Contemporary geologists were critical of his inability to see the value of fossils and his skepticism of many emerging scientific theories.
Greenough was born in London, as George Bellas, named after his father, George Bellas, who had a profitable business in the legal profession as a proctor in Doctor's Commons, St Paul's Churchyard Doctors' Commons and some real estate in Surrey. His mother was the only daughter of the apothecary Thomas Greenough, whose very successful business was located on Ludgate Hill near to St Paul's. A younger brother died in infancy.
At the age of six he was orphaned with his father dying first, and the cause, recorded by Greenough in a biographical sketch, was ‘By neglect of business, by carelessness, extravagance, dissipation and by party zeal, my father’s fortune was soon squandered away—family dissention followed; his constitution was broken, his prospects blighted and he died of decline at Clifton in 1784’. His mother followed only a few months later.
He was adopted by his maternal grandfather, who had made a fortune through selling popular preparations, the most popular of which were "Pectoral Lozenge from Balsam of Tolu", for coughs and colds, and various tinctures for cleaning teeth and gums and curing tooth ache.
His grandfather sent him to Mr Cotton's school at Salthill near Slough and then to Eton at the age of ten. He stayed there only one year, suggesting he was perhaps too delicate a child for the robust life at the boarding schools of the day. In September 1789 he entered Dr Thompson's school at Kensington where he studied for the next six years. Whilst he was at school he took the name Greenough at the request of his grandfather.
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