Themes of the Day:

• History of the Science of Geology
• History of the Science of Mineralogy

History of the Science of Geology

• Stone Age, Iron Age, Bronze Age - natural resource specialists
• First geologic maps are from Egypt (circa 5 ka) - resource maps
• 79 A.D. - First scientific description of a volcanic eruption by Pliny the Younger (Pliny the Elder succumbed to volcanic gasses during naval evacuation efforts.) (Vesuvius from Pompeii in Google Earth)
• De Re Metallica, 1556 by Gregorius Agricola - Dawn of mineralogy as a science (translated into English by Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover, 1912)
• Nicolas Steno (Neils Stensen - mid-1600's) Principles of Superposition, Original Horizontality, Lateral Continuity
• James Hutton (1726-1797) - "Father of Modern Geology" - observed the angular unconformity at Siccar Point, Scotland which led to understanding of the immensity of geologic time - Earth history viewed as "no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end."
• Catastrophism (origins in Biblical view of Creation) vs. Uniformitarianism (championed by Hutton) - "The present is the key to the past." - Strongly debated mid-late 1700's
• Charles Lyell (1830) Principles of Geology - Includes Principles of Crosscutting Relations and Inclusions
• Current view emphasizes uniformitarian processes, but recognizes geologic significance of catastrophic events
• Alfred Wegener (1912) Hypothesis of Continental Drift
• Plate Tectonics Revolution (1960's) - paradigm shift

History of the Science of Mineralogy

• Theophrastus (ca. 387 B.C. - 272 B.C.) - On Stones
• Pliny the Elder - 77 A.D. - encyclopedic treatise on ores, gemstones, and pigments
• Georg Bauer, a.k.a. Gregorius Agricola - 1556 - De Re Metallica - detailed descriptions of physical properties of minerals
• Neils Stensen, a.k.a. Nicolas Steno - 1669 - Law of Constancy of Interfacial Angles - Also Superposition, etc.
• A. G. Werner (1750-1817) - standardized nomenclature for mineral descriptions - Neptunist
• Rene-Juste Hauy (1743-1822) - mathematical crystallography - Unit Cell, crystal growth faces
• J. J. Berzelius (1779-1848) - chemical classification
• William Nichol (1768-1851) - Nicol Prism - basis for optical mineralogy
• James D. Dana (1813-1895) - A System of Mineralogy - basis for most modern Mineralogy textbooks
• Henry Clifton Sorby (1826-1908) - Petrographic Microscope
• Max von Laue (1879-1960) - minerals diffract X-Rays (1912)
• W. H. Bragg (1862-1942) and W. L. Bragg (1890-1971) - Bragg's Law, mineral ID by X-Ray Diffraction
• Linus Pauling - Pauling's Principles (Nobel Prize in Chemistry)