The BGS glaciological expedition to Arctic Norway 150 years ago (lecture)

Professor Peter Worsley, University of Reading

Joint lecture with the Geological Society of Edinburgh

Following the excitement created by the visit to Britain by Louis Agassiz in 1840, opinion during the next two decades “met the glacial theory of the drift in general and that of extinct glaciers in particular, with incredulity and sometimes with derision” (A.C. Ramsay 1860). To address a growing conviction that glaciation by land ice had indeed occurred, Geological Survey employees Archie and James Geikie, accompanied by William Whitaker, decided to investigate modern glacial geological processes first-hand. In 1865 they went on an expedition to the Norwegian Arctic, focusing on Holandsfjorden, immediately to the north west of the Svartisen ice cap. Their observations, including the first glacial geological map of an active area of glaciation, combined with a re-examination of the ground they examined, will be discussed and assessed.

Professor Peter Worsley is Emeritus Professor of Quaternary Geology in the School of Human and Environmental Sciences, University of Reading, and is president of the Reading Geological Society. After graduating in Geology and Geography at Keele University in 1962, Professor Worsley completed his Ph. D. in Quaternary Geology at the University of Manchester in 1965 and joined Reading University in the same year.

The meeting will be followed by tea and biscuits in the Cockburn Museum of the Grant Institute, to which all are invited.