Andrew Ramsay

Andrew Ramsay was a Scottish geologist born January 31, 1814, in Glasgow, Scotland, who died December 9, 1891, in Beaumaris, Wales, and who served on the Geological Survey for forty years from 1841 to 1881, was appointed professor of geology at University College, London, in 1848 and lecturer at the Royal School of Mines in 1851, served as president of the Geological Society of London in 1862, succeeded Roderick Murchison as Director-General of the Geological Survey in 1872, and was knighted upon his retirement in 1881. His work on physical geology and stratigraphy included The Geology of the Isle of Arran in 1841 and The Geology of North Wales in 1866, and he advanced a theory, never generally accepted, that certain lake basins originated through glacial action. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1862 and to the American Philosophical Society in 1862, served as president of the British Association in 1880, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1871 and the Royal Medal in 1880.