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William Smith
William Smith
—died
Aug. 28, 1839, Northampton, Northamptonshire), English engineer and
geologist who is best known for his development of
the science of stratigraphy. Smith’s great geologic map of England and
Wales (1815) set the style for modern geologic maps, and many of the
colourful names he applied to the strata are still in use today.
learned the basic methods of surveying from books he bought himself,
and collected the abundant fossils of his native Cotswold hills. In 1787 he
became an assistant to Edward Webb, a surveyor in nearby Stow-on-the-
Wold, who in 1791 helped Smith become established in the
Somersetshire coal district southwest of Bath.
During preliminary surveys for a proposed Somersetshire Coal Canal in
1793, Smith discovered that the strata outcropping in the northern part of
the region dip regularly eastward, like so many “slices of bread and
butter.” On a long trip in 1794 to examine canals and collieries, he had an
opportunity to extend his observations. His suspicion that the strata
of Somerset could be traced far northward across England was brilliantly
confirmed as the familiar beds were encountered again and again during
this journey. Excavation of the new canal began in 1795, and Smith,
studying the fresh cuts, found that each stratum contained “fossils
peculiar to itself.”
In 1799 Smith dictated to an amateur geologist in Bath his now-famous
table of strata in the vicinity of Bath, which became a principal means for
circulating his revolutionary discoveries. He also exhibited his maps and
stratigraphic sections at agricultural fairs, such as the Holkham
“Sheepshearings,” which he regularly attended. Much of his professional
work was for the gentleman farmers who supported these shows, but he
also supervised major reclamation projects in Norfolk and Wales,
restoration of the hot springs at Bath, and a multitude of canal and colliery
projects, sometimes travelling 10,000 miles a year (an incredible total
made possible by the inauguration of fast mail coaches in 1784).
In 1822 his work was praised by William D. Conybeare and William
Phillips in their textbook on English stratigraphy, Outlines of the Geology
of England and Wales. In 1831 he received from the Geological Society
of London the first Wollaston Medal and in 1832 a yearly pension from the
crown. He died in 1839 on his way to a scientific meeting in Birmingham.
Smith was not only exceptionally observant but possessed the power
to integrate his observations. He saw that different rock layers contained
different fossils and used this fact to trace strata over hundreds of miles.
So great was his ability that geologists still use all of the techniques he
introduced, and current geologic maps of England differ from his primarily
in detail. Between 1815 and 1817 he published a few thin volumes on his
work, but in a sense they were too late. Smith had always talked freely to
anyone interested, and his knowledge was already public property being
applied by geologists in every part of Britain. The fame Smith achieved in
his lifetime remains undimmed to this day, and he is universally admired
as the “Founder of Stratigraphy.”