Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, United Kingdom
Logan’s education began at Skakel’s Private School in Montreal and continued at the Edinburgh High School, 1814-1816, and Edinburgh University, 1816-1817, where he studied chemistry, mathematics, and logic.
Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, United Kingdom
Logan’s education began at Skakel’s Private School in Montreal and continued at the Edinburgh High School, 1814-1816, and Edinburgh University, 1816-1817, where he studied chemistry, mathematics, and logic.
Sir William Edmond Logan was a Canadian geologist. He was the founder and first director of the Geological Survey of Canada.
Background
Logan was born on April 20, 1798, in Montreal. His grandfather, James Logan, emigrated from Stirling, Scotland, to Montreal in 1784 and soon developed a prosperous bakery business, which passed upon his retirement to his eldest son, William. The latter married Janet Edmond of Stirling.
Education
Logan’s education began at Skakel’s Private School in Montreal and continued at the Edinburgh High School, 1814-1816, and Edinburgh University, 1816-1817, where he studied chemistry, mathematics, and logic.
Logan spent the years 1818-1831 in his uncle Hart’s bank in London, becoming its manager upon his uncle’s retirement in 1827. Later (1831-1838) he joined the management of a copper-smelting and coal-mining venture near Swansea, Wales, in which his uncle was interested, remaining there until his uncle’s death. He soon found that chemistry and geology were essential to the success of the business and embarked upon a geological study of the local Glamorganshire coalfield - ultimately, in 1838, producing a memoir, with maps and sections. Its excellence was recognized by the director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, Sir Henry De la Beche, who with Logan’s permission incorporated it in toto in the Survey’s report on that region. From that time on, Logan devoted himself exclusively to geology, particularly to the coal formations.
Logan’s work on underclays with fossil Stigmaria in South Wales coalfields was to weigh heavily on the side of the in situ theory of the origin of coal, and, with his papers on the packing of ice in the St. Lawrence River, soon established him as a geologist of note. In 1842 the appointment of a provincial geologist was approved by the Canadian government under Sir Charles Bagot, who set about finding a suitable candidate. Logan obtained “a mass of testimonials“ including letters from four of the most influential British geologists of the time: De la Beche, Roderick Murchison, Adam Sedgwick, and William Buckland. As a consequence he was offered, and accepted, the directorship of the newly created Geological Survey of Canada, a post which he held until 1869. For twenty-seven years he and his assistants traveled in all reachable parts of Canada from the Great Lakes to the Maritime Provinces; they also issued reports of progress, of which “Report on the Geology of Canada,“ his magnum opus, provided a compilation of twenty years of research. After more than a century, it is still a reservoir of important information.
Logan was fortunate in the choice of his assistants for both fieldwork and office work. Alexander Murray was his first and most important field geologist until he resigned to become director of the Geological Survey of Newfoundland in 1864. T. Sterry Hunt, his chemist, was responsible for hundreds of analyses of minerals, rocks, and ores. Elkanah Billings, his paleontologist, examined all fossils collected by field geologists and provided Logan with information invaluable for the correct identification of the age and the stratigraphic position of rock formations.
Following the publication of the 1863 report one can detect a slight but increasing diminution of Logan’s powers, which in 1869 he recognized had reached a point where a younger man was needed to carry the burden of a vigorous and growing organization. As a consequence, in that year he resigned as director and divided his time between an estate he had bought in Wales and exploration, at his own expense, in Canada, designed to settle certain vexatious problems which had been left unsolved at the time of his resignation. While preparing for a summer’s fieldwork in the eastern townships of Quebec, he became ill; and following a short illness he died in 1875. He was buried in the churchyard at Llechryd, Wales.
Achievements
Views
In his paper "On the Characters of the Beds of Clay Immediately below the Coal-Seams of South Wales" he showed clearly that coal developed originally in the position in which it was now being found and was not some vast garbage pile of driftwood from past eras which had become mineralized.
Logan’s bibliography is not extensive and consists mostly of progress reports to the government concerning the work of the Survey. Many of these reports, sixteen in all, he wrote in his own hand - some in quadruplicate. The most important, and nearly the last, was his 1863 report, which provided the first complete coverage, according to information then available, of the geology of Canada from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic seaboard. In this remarkable compilation Logan was ably assisted by Sterry Hunt, whose work as chemist provided the foundation on which much of the information concerning the rocks, minerals, and ores of Canada was based. Early articles on underclay, the Glamorganshire coalfield, and ice packing have been mentioned. Others, mostly short notes, recorded his observations on the copper-bearing rocks of Lake Superior, animal tracks in the Potsdam sandstone, the supposed fossil Eozoön, subdivision of the Precambrian rocks of Canada, and remarks on the laconic question, in which he avoided controversy by using the term “Quebec group“for equivalent rocks in Canada. Although he was the first to publish the discovery of Eozoön, and exhibited specimens of it during his visits to England, Logan later became noncommittal as the battle was waged between those who saw it as a fossil and those who advocated its metamorphic origin.
Membership
Royal Society of London
,
United Kingdom
Royal Society of Edinburgh
,
United Kingdom
Personality
In addition to Logan's skills at geological observation and surviving in the wilds, he was an adept manager.