Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (19th February, 1792 - 22nd, October, 1871), KCB, DCL, LLD, FRS, FGL, etc., was one of the founders of modern geology. Using discernible fossil communities he established the Silurian, Permian, and, with Adam Sedgwick, the Devonian stratigraphic systems of geology. He extended his fieldwork to Europe and the Russian Empire and thus demonstrated the universality of the fossil-based stratigraphic systems that he had delineated in Britain. He gained fame by predicting gold in Australia, based on his findings in Russia where his coal discoveries (made at the behest of...