The English geologist Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) was the founder of the Cambrian system, the first period of the Paleozoic geologic era.

Adam Sedgwick was born on March 22, 1785, at Dent in his ancestral region of the Yorkshire Dales. In 1804 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, which became his chief home for the rest of his life. After being made a fellow in 1810, he was ordained; he later became a canon of Norwich. In 1818 he was elected to the professorship of geology, not because he knew anything about geology but on his general merits. However, he began enthusiastically to study the subject, giving lectures and making geological tours, but he constantly allowed himself to be diverted by business irrelevant to his geological work.

During 1821-1824 Sedgwick carried out researches in the north of England--on the Magnesian Limestone and New Red Sandstone and in the Lake District--but he delayed in the announcement...