Scottish geologist

Roderick Murchison was an amateur geologist of the Victorian age in Britain. Murchison's paramount achievement is his naming of the periods of the stratigraphic column.

Murchison was wealthy and traveled often; both qualities enabled him to make a significant contribution to geological research in England and Wales while still an amateur in the field. Born in Ross in Scotland, Murchison was destined for a military career and trained at Durham and Great Marlow Military College. Until 1818, he lived in Ross-shire at which time he moved to England. A colleague, chemist Humphrey Davy, along with Murchison's wife, persuaded Murchison to attend some lectures on chemistry and geology, and he then turned his vast energies to science.

Murchison named the Silurian System in 1839, after an Iron Age tribe in mid-Wales and the Permian in 1841, after the Perm region of Russia in the Ural Mountains...