Abstract
BY the death of Prof. James Geikie, Edinburgh and its university have been deprived of one of the most prominent of its men of science, and geology has lost a distinguished investigator and successful teacher. The son of J. S. Geikie, of Edinburgh, whose literary talent found expression in a number of popular Scottish songs, the subject of this notice was educated at the high school and university of his native city, and in 1861, when only twenty-two years of age, received an appointment upon the Geological Survey of Scotland, a service in which his elder brother, Archibald, had already been engaged for five years. James Geikie's work as a surveyor, lay chiefly in the south-west of Scotland, and in 1869 he was promoted to be a district surveyor; his studies seem to have been more particularly attracted, from a very early date, to the post-tertiary deposits, and in various papers in the scientific journals, as well as in the official memoirs of the survey, he published the results of his observations and his conclusions based upon them. Early in his career, James Geikie had become a great admirer and warm friend of Andrew Ramsay, then director of the English Geological Survey, and Ramsay's theoretical views and speculative suggestions found a stout supporter in the young Edinburgh geologist. In 1876 the Colonial Office requested Ramsay to proceed to Gibraltar in order to report on the important question of its water-supply, and James Geikie was chosen to accompany and assist him. In addition to the valuable report made to the Government, the two geologists were able to contribute to scientific journals memoirs dealing with the geology of Gibraltar, and especially with the superficial and cavern-deposits, and their bearing on the history of the Mediterranean in post-tertiary times.
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J., J. Prof. James Geikie, F.R.S. . Nature 95, 40–41 (1915). https://doi.org/10.1038/095040a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/095040a0