Central Events in the Earth Sciences

Murray, C.A. (2003) Human accomplishment the pursuit of excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. HarperCollins Publishers.

Year	Country	Event
520 BCE	Greece	Pythagoras of Samos argues that the earth is spherical.
300 BCE	Greece	Pytheas of Massilia describes the ocean tides and their relationship to the moon.
240 BCE	Alexandria	Eratosthenes calculates values for the circumference and diameter of the earth accurate to within about 15 percent of the true values.
1546	Germany	Agricola’s De Natura Fossilium classifies minerals, founding mineralogy. The term fossil is introduced for anything dug from the ground.
1544	Germany, England	Georg Hartman discovers magnetic “dip,” or inclination, rediscovered in 1576 by Robert Norman.
1568	Belgium	Mercator invents the Mercator projection for maps.
1668	England	Robert Hooke proposes that fossils can be used as a source of information about the earth’s history.
1669	Denmark	Nicolaus Steno diagrams six levels of stratification, arguing that shifts in earth’s strata caused the formation of mountains.
1669	Denmark	Nicolaus Steno identifies fossils as ancient creatures.
1671	France	Jean Picard’s Mesure de la Terre gives an estimate of the size of the earth accurate to within about 90 feet.
1680	England	Robert Boyle develops the silver nitrate test for sea water, founding chemical oceanography.
1725	Italy	Luigi Marsigli’s Histoire Physique de la Mer is the first treatise on oceanography, discussing topography, circulation, ocean plants and animals, along with many measurements.
1746	France	Jean-Etienne Guettard prepares the first true geological maps, showing rocks and minerals arranged in bands.
1752	France	Jean-Etienne Guettard identifies heat as the causative factor of change in the earth’s landforms.
1756	Germany	Johann Lehmann’s Versuch einer Geschichte von Flotz-Geburgcn describes earth’s crust as a structured sequence of strata.
1760	England	John Michell writes “Essay on the Causes and Phenomena of Earthquakes,” beginning the systematic study of seismology.
1770	USA	Benjamin Franklin prepares the first scientific chart of the Gulf Stream.
1779	Switzerland	Horace Saussure writes Voyage dans les Alpes, describing his geological, meteorological, and botanical studies, and coining the term geology.
1785	Scotland	James Hutton’s “Concerning the System of the Earth” is the first statement of the uniformitarian view of earth’s development.
1798	England	James Hall demonstrates that lavas can be fused into glass, explaining otherwise puzzling geologic formations and founding experimental geology.
1799	England	William Smith discovers ways in which fossils can be used to identify correspondences between strata in different regions.
1811	France	Georges Cuvier’s and Alexandre Brongniart’s maps of formations in the Paris region establish the basic principles of paleontological stratigraphy.
1812	France	Georges Cuvier’s Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles systematically analyzes and classifies extinct forms of life, founding vertebrate paleontology.
1812	France	Georges Cuvier’s Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles introduces catastrophism as an explanation for extinctions.
1815	England	William Smith prepares the first geologic map showing relationships on a large scale, including England, Wales, and part of Scotland.
1830	England	Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology argues that geological formations are created over millions of years, creating a new time frame for other disciplines as well and founding modern geology.
1835	France	Gaspard de Coriolis discovers the Coriolis effect, the deflection of a moving body caused by the earth’s rotation.
1837	USA	Louis Agassiz’s “Discourse at Neuchatel” is the first presentation of the Ice Age theory.
1838	Scotland	Roderick Murchison describes the Silurian System, establishing the sequence of early Paleozoic rocks.
1842	England	Richard Owen coins the word dinosaur and describes two new genera.
1847	USA	Matthew Maury publishes the first extensive oceanographic and weather charts.
1855	USA	Matthew Maury writes Physical Geography of the Sea, the first textbook of oceanography.
1866	France	Gabriel Daubree presents his theory that the earth has a nickel­ iron core.
1880	England	John Milne invents the first precise seismograph, founding modern seismology.
1883	USA	Edward Cope's The Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the West reports the discovery of the first complete remains of dinosaurs of the Cretaceous.
1902	England, USA	Oliver Heaviside and Arthur Kennelly independently predict the existence of a layer in the atmosphere that permits long-distance radio transmission, confirmed in 1924 by Edward Appleton.
1902	France	Leon Teisserenc de Bort describes the atmosphere as divided into the troposphere and stratosphere.
1909	Croatia	Andrija Mohorovicic discovers the Mohorovicic discontinuity in the earth’s crust that separates the outermost crust from a more rigid layer.
1913	France	Charles Fabry discovers ozone in the upper atmosphere and demonstrates that it filters out solar ultraviolet radiation.
1914	USA	Beno Gutenberg discovers the Gutenberg Discontinuity in the earth’s structure, separating a liquid core from a solid mantle.
1915	Germany	Alfred Wegener’s Die Entstehung dev Kontinente uttd Ozeaite presents evidence for a primordial continent, Pangaea, and subsequent continental drift.
1920	Norway	Jakob and Vilhelm Bjerknes describe air masses and fronts, and their use in weather prediction.
1924	England	Edward Appleton discovers the ionosphere.
1924	South Africa	Raymond Dart discovers Australopithecus and categorizes it as a hominid, neither human nor ape.
1930	USA	Charles Beebe’s first bathysphere reaches a depth of 417 meters, allowing the first direct access to the ocean depths.
1931	Switzerland	Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer use a high altitude balloon to reach the stratosphere.
1935	USA	Charles Richter invents the Richter scale for measuring the magnitude of earthquakes.