1.
Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
–
Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh judges to be eminently distinguished in their subject. Around 50 new fellows are elected each year in March, as of 2016 there are around 1650 Fellows, including 71 Honorary Fellows and 76 Corresponding Fellows. Fellows are entitled to use the post-nominal letters FRSE, examples of fellows include Peter Higgs and Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Previous fellows have included Melvin Calvin and Benjamin Franklin, see the Category, Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for more examples
2.
Henry Raeburn
–
Sir Henry Raeburn FRSE RA RSA was a Scottish portrait painter and Scotlands first significant portrait painter since the Union to remain based in Scotland. He served as Portrait Painter to King George IV in Scotland, Raeburn was born the son of a manufacturer in Stockbridge, on the Water of Leith, a former village now within the city of Edinburgh. He had a brother, born in 1744, called William Raeburn. His ancestors were believed to have been soldiers, and may have taken the name Raeburn from a farm in Annandale. Orphaned, he was supported by William and placed in Heriots Hospital, soon he took to the production of carefully finished portrait miniatures, meeting with success and patronage, he extended his practice to oil painting, at which he was self-taught. Raeburn was especially aided by the loan of portraits to copy, soon he had gained sufficient skill to make him decide to devote himself exclusively to painting. George Chalmers is his earliest known portrait, in his early twenties, Raeburn was asked to paint the portrait of a young lady he had noticed when he was sketching from nature in the fields. Anne was the daughter of Peter Edgar of Bridgelands, and widow of Count James Leslie of Deanhaugh, fascinated by the handsome and intellectual young artist, she became his wife within a month, bringing him an ample fortune. The acquisition of wealth did not affect his enthusiasm or his industry and it was usual for artists to visit Italy, and Raeburn set off with his wife. After two years of study in Italy he returned to Edinburgh in 1787, and began a career as a portrait painter. In that year he executed a portrait of the second Lord President Dundas. The portraits of John Clerk, Lord Eldin, and of Principal Hill of St Andrews belong to a later period, Raeburn was fortunate in the time in which he practised portraiture. Sir Walter Scott, Hugh Blair, Henry Mackenzie, Lord Woodhouselee, William Robertson, John Home, Robert Fergusson, and Dugald Stewart were resident in Edinburgh, mature works include his own portrait and that of the Rev. Apart from himself, Raeburn painted only two artists, one of whom was Sir Francis Leggatt Chantrey, the most important and famous British sculptor of the first half of the nineteenth century. Raeburn spent his life in Edinburgh, rarely visiting London, and then only for brief periods, so varied were his other interests that sitters used to say of him, You would never take him for a painter till he seizes the brush and palette. In 1812 he was elected president of the Society of Artists in Edinburgh, in 1814 associate, on 29 August 1822 he was knighted by George IV and appointed His Majestys limner for Scotland at the Earl of Hopetoun house. Raeburn had all the qualities of a popular and successful portrait painter. David Wilkie recorded that, while travelling in Spain and studying the works of Diego Velázquez, Scottish physician and writer John Brown wrote that Raeburn never fails in giving a likeness at once vivid, unmistakable and pleasing
3.
Edinburgh
–
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 local government council areas. Located in Lothian on the Firth of Forths southern shore, it is Scotlands second most populous city and the seventh most populous in the United Kingdom. The 2014 official population estimates are 464,990 for the city of Edinburgh,492,680 for the authority area. Recognised as the capital of Scotland since at least the 15th century, Edinburgh is home to the Scottish Parliament and it is the largest financial centre in the UK after London. Historically part of Midlothian, the city has long been a centre of education, particularly in the fields of medicine, Scots law, literature, the sciences and engineering. The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1582 and now one of four in the city, was placed 17th in the QS World University Rankings in 2013 and 2014. The city is famous for the Edinburgh International Festival and the Fringe. The citys historical and cultural attractions have made it the United Kingdoms second most popular tourist destination after London, attracting over one million overseas visitors each year. Historic sites in Edinburgh include Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace, the churches of St. Giles, Greyfriars and the Canongate, Edinburghs Old Town and New Town together are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which has been managed by Edinburgh World Heritage since 1999. It appears to derive from the place name Eidyn mentioned in the Old Welsh epic poem Y Gododdin, the poem names Din Eidyn as a hill fort in the territory of the Gododdin. The Celtic element din was dropped and replaced by the Old English burh, the first documentary evidence of the medieval burgh is a royal charter, c. 1124–1127, by King David I granting a toft in burgo meo de Edenesburg to the Priory of Dunfermline. In modern Gaelic, the city is called Dùn Èideann, the earliest known human habitation in the Edinburgh area was at Cramond, where evidence was found of a Mesolithic camp site dated to c.8500 BC. Traces of later Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements have found on Castle Rock, Arthurs Seat, Craiglockhart Hill. When the Romans arrived in Lothian at the end of the 1st century AD, at some point before the 7th century AD, the Gododdin, who were presumably descendants of the Votadini, built the hill fort of Din Eidyn or Etin. Although its location has not been identified, it likely they would have chosen a commanding position like the Castle Rock, Arthurs Seat. In 638, the Gododdin stronghold was besieged by forces loyal to King Oswald of Northumbria and it thenceforth remained under their jurisdiction. The royal burgh was founded by King David I in the early 12th century on land belonging to the Crown, in 1638, King Charles Is attempt to introduce Anglican church forms in Scotland encountered stiff Presbyterian opposition culminating in the conflicts of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. In the 17th century, Edinburghs boundaries were defined by the citys defensive town walls
4.
Scotland
–
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
5.
University of Edinburgh
–
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1582, is the sixth oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotlands ancient universities. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city of Edinburgh, the University of Edinburgh was ranked 17th and 21st in the world by the 2014–15 and 2015-16 QS rankings. It is now ranked 19th in the according to 2016-17 QS Rankings. It is ranked 16th in the world in arts and humanities by the 2015–16 Times Higher Education Ranking and it is ranked the 23rd most employable university in the world by the 2015 Global Employability University Ranking. It is ranked as the 6th best university in Europe by the U. S. News Best Global Universities Ranking and it is a member of both the Russell Group, and the League of European Research Universities, a consortium of 21 research universities in Europe. It has the third largest endowment of any university in the United Kingdom, after the universities of Cambridge and it continues to have links to the British Royal Family, having had the Duke of Edinburgh as its Chancellor from 1953 to 2010 and Princess Anne since 2011. Edinburgh receives approximately 50,000 applications every year, making it the fourth most popular university in the UK by volume of applicants, after St Andrews, it is the most difficult university to gain admission into in Scotland, and 9th overall in the UK. This was a move at the time, as most universities were established through Papal bulls. Established as the Tounis College, it opened its doors to students in October 1583, instruction began under the charge of another St Andrews graduate Robert Rollock. It was the fourth Scottish university in a period when the more populous. It was renamed King Jamess College in 1617, by the 18th century, the university was a leading centre of the Scottish Enlightenment. The universitys first custom-built building was the Old College, now Edinburgh Law School and its first forte in teaching was anatomy and the developing science of surgery, from which it expanded into many other subjects. From the basement of a nearby house ran the anatomy tunnel corridor and it went under what was then North College Street, and under the university buildings until it reached the universitys anatomy lecture theatre, delivering bodies for dissection. It was from this tunnel the body of William Burke was taken after he had been hanged, towards the end of the 19th century, Old College was becoming overcrowded and Robert Rowand Anderson was commissioned to design new Medical School premises in 1875. The medical school was more or less built to his design and was completed by the addition of the McEwan Hall in the 1880s. The building now known as New College was originally built as a Free Church college in the 1840s and has been the home of divinity at the university since the 1920s. The two oldest schools – law and divinity – are both well-esteemed, with law being based in Old College and divinity in New College on the Mound and they are also represented by the Edinburgh University Sports Union which was founded in 1866. The medical school is renowned throughout the world and it was widely considered the best medical school in the English-speaking world throughout the 18th century and first half of the 19th century
6.
University of Paris
–
The University of Paris, metonymically known as the Sorbonne, was a university in Paris, France. Emerging around 1150 as an associated with the cathedral school of Notre Dame de Paris. Vast numbers of popes, royalties, scientists and intellectuals were educated at the University of Paris, following the turbulence of the French Revolution, education was suspended in 1793 whereafter its faculties were partly reorganised by Napoleon as the University of France. In 1896, it was renamed again to the University of Paris, in 1970, following the May 1968 events, the university was divided into 13 autonomous universities. Others, like Panthéon-Sorbonne University, chose to be multidisciplinary, in 1150, the future University of Paris was a student-teacher corporation operating as an annex of the Notre-Dame cathedral school. The university had four faculties, Arts, Medicine, Law, the Faculty of Arts was the lowest in rank, but also the largest, as students had to graduate there in order to be admitted to one of the higher faculties. The students were divided into four nationes according to language or regional origin, France, Normandy, Picardy, the last came to be known as the Alemannian nation. Recruitment to each nation was wider than the names might imply, the faculty and nation system of the University of Paris became the model for all later medieval universities. Under the governance of the Church, students wore robes and shaved the tops of their heads in tonsure, students followed the rules and laws of the Church and were not subject to the kings laws or courts. This presented problems for the city of Paris, as students ran wild, students were often very young, entering the school at age 13 or 14 and staying for 6 to 12 years. Three schools were especially famous in Paris, the palatine or palace school, the school of Notre-Dame, the decline of royalty brought about the decline of the first. The other two were ancient but did not have much visibility in the early centuries, the glory of the palatine school doubtless eclipsed theirs, until it completely gave way to them. These two centres were much frequented and many of their masters were esteemed for their learning, the first renowned professor at the school of Ste-Geneviève was Hubold, who lived in the tenth century. Not content with the courses at Liège, he continued his studies at Paris, entered or allied himself with the chapter of Ste-Geneviève, and attracted many pupils via his teaching. Distinguished professors from the school of Notre-Dame in the century include Lambert, disciple of Fulbert of Chartres, Drogo of Paris, Manegold of Germany. Three other men who added prestige to the schools of Notre-Dame and Ste-Geneviève were William of Champeaux, Abélard, humanistic instruction comprised grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. To the higher instruction belonged dogmatic and moral theology, whose source was the Scriptures and it was completed by the study of Canon law. The School of Saint-Victor arose to rival those of Notre-Dame and Ste-Geneviève and it was founded by William of Champeaux when he withdrew to the Abbey of Saint-Victor
7.
Deep time
–
Deep time is the concept of geologic time. The modern philosophical concept was developed in the 18th century by Scottish geologist James Hutton, Modern scientists believe, after a long and complex history of developments, that the age of the Earth is around 4.55 billion years. Hutton based his view of time on a form of geochemistry that had been developed in Scotland. Huttons innovative 1785 theory, based on Plutonism, visualised an endless process of rocks forming under the sea, being uplifted and tilted. In a competing theory, Charles Lyell in his Principles of Geology developed Huttons comprehension of endless deep time as a scientific concept into uniformitarianism. John McPhee discussed deep time at length with the layman in mind in Basin and Range, one stroke of a nail file on his middle finger erases human history. Concepts similar to time were recognized in the 11th century by the Persian geologist and polymath Avicenna. The Roman Catholic theologian Thomas Berry explored the implications of the concept of Deep Time. This view has influenced the development of deep ecology and ecophilosophy. The experiential nature of the experience of time has also greatly influenced the work of Joanna Macy. We very soon get used to maps, though they are constructed on scales down to a hundred-millionth of natural size, book review, In Search of Deep Time. Darwin, C. R. Darwin Correspondence Project - Letter 101 — Darwin, C. R. to Fox, W. D. Korthof, a Revolution in Palaeontology, Review of Henry Gees In Search of Deep Time. Siccar Point and Teaching the History of Geology, the Context of Humanity, Understanding Deep Time. Historical Geology, The Present is the Key to the Past, the Man Who Found Time, James Hutton and the Discovery of the Earths Antiquity. The Dark Abyss of Time, The History of the Earth, Science in Ancient China, Researches and Reflections. Brookfield, Vermont, Ashgate Publishing Variorum series, the Ancestry of Science, The Discovery of Time. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, New York, D. Appleton & Company. The Map That Changed the World, William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, adjudicating Deep Time, Revisiting The United States High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository Project At Yucca Mountain
8.
Gaia hypothesis
–
The hypothesis was formulated by the chemist James Lovelock and co-developed by the microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s. Even so, the Gaia hypothesis continues to attract criticism, and today some scientists consider it to be only weakly supported by, or at odds with, in 2006, the Geological Society of London awarded Lovelock the Wollaston Medal in part for his work on the Gaia hypothesis. Gaian hypotheses suggest that organisms co-evolve with their environment, that is, they influence their environment. This is not the work of an individual but a collective of Russian scientific research that was combined into this peer reviewed publication and it states the coevolution of life and the environment through “micro–forces” and biogeochemical processes. An example is how the activity of bacteria during Precambrian times have completely modified the Earth atmosphere to turn it aerobic. Less accepted versions of the claim that changes in the biosphere are brought about through the coordination of living organisms. In some versions of Gaia philosophy, all lifeforms are considered part of one single living planetary being called Gaia, in this view, the atmosphere, the seas and the terrestrial crust would be results of interventions carried out by Gaia through the coevolving diversity of living organisms. The Gaia hypothesis posits that the Earth is a complex system involving the biosphere, the atmosphere, the hydrospheres. The hypothesis contends that this system as a whole, called Gaia, Gaia evolves through a cybernetic feedback system operated unconsciously by the biota, leading to broad stabilization of the conditions of habitability in a full homeostasis. Many processes in the Earths surface essential for the conditions of life depend on the interaction of living forms, especially microorganisms and this, he suggests tended to screen out ultraviolet until the formation of the ozone screen, maintaining a degree of homeostasis. These epochs are evidence against the ability of the pre Phanerozoic biosphere to fully self-regulate, processing of the greenhouse gas CO2, explained below, plays a critical role in the maintenance of the Earth temperature within the limits of habitability. The CLAW hypothesis, inspired by the Gaia hypothesis, proposes a feedback loop that operates between ocean ecosystems and the Earths climate, Lovelock has stated that this could bring an extremely accelerated global warming, but he has since stated the effects will likely occur more slowly. The model demonstrates that beneficial feedback mechanisms can emerge in this toy world containing only self-interested organisms rather than through classic group selection mechanisms, Daisyworld examines the energy budget of a planet populated by two different types of plants, black daisies and white daisies. The colour of the influences the albedo of the planet such that black daisies absorb light and warm the planet, while white daisies reflect light. As the model runs the output of the sun increases, meaning that the temperature of an uninhabited gray planet will steadily rise. In contrast, on Daisyworld competition between the leads to a shifting balance of daisy populations that tends to favour a planetary temperature close to the optimum for daisy growth. It has been suggested that the results were predictable because Lovelock, ocean salinity has been constant at about 3. 5% for a very long time. Salinity stability in oceanic environments is important as most cells require a rather constant salinity, the constant ocean salinity was a long-standing mystery, because no process counterbalancing the salt influx from rivers was known
9.
John Walker (natural historian)
–
Very Rev Prof John Walker DD MD FRSE was a Scottish minister and natural historian. He was Regius Professor of Natural history at the University of Edinburgh from 1779 to 1803 and he was joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783 and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1790. Many of his students went on to leading scientists in nineteenth century Scotland, England, Ireland. He was a pioneer in introducing agricultural topics into a university curriculum and he was elected as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1790. Born in Canongate, Edinburgh to a father, he matriculated at the University of Edinburgh in 1746. Like many aspiring men in Scotland at this time, he took a divinity degree in 1749 and he was soon ordained into the Church of Scotland and spent the next thirty years as a parish minister. However, his duties did not stop him from pursuing scientific subjects in his spare time, while at university he had taken natural philosophy courses and had collected natural history specimens in and around the Lothians. During the 1750s he continued to pursue scientific subjects by studying chemistry under Prof. William Cullen and he distinguished himself not only by winning awards from the society but also by publishing an article in the 1757 edition of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. During the 1760s he used his connections to tour mines throughout the Lowlands. By the mid-1760s, Walker was known as one of Scotlands leading lay naturalists and this motivated the Church of Scotland and the Board of Annexed Estates to send him on exploratory tours of the Highland and Hebrides in 1764 and 1771. These tours allowed him to religious and ethnographic observations for the church and to take scientifically oriented notes on northern Scotlands minerals, plants, animals. During the 1770s Walker published articles in the Scots Magazine and the Philosophical Transactions, by the mid part of the decade, it became clear that Robert Ramsey, the University of Edinburghs ailing Professor of Natural History, would soon need to be replaced. After much wrangling, Walker won the contest and was appointed in 1779 and he held the position until his death in 1803. Walkers natural history lectures spanned the year and were divided into two sections. The first half of the year he gave his Hippocratean lectures, the second half of the year was devoted to the three kingdoms of nature, minerals, plants, and animals. During the 1760s, he had accepted Linnaeus binomial classification system, however, he did not agree with Linnaeus classification of minerals and animals and therefore he developed his own unique system for both of these subjects. As shown by Matthew Daniel Eddy, Walker developed a theory of the earth based on evidence gathered from geochemistry. Throughout his entire career he kept his ties with the Kirk and in 1790 he was elected to be Moderator, its highest position
10.
Charles Lyell
–
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, FRS was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. Principles of Geology also challenged theories popularized by Georges Cuvier, which were the most accepted and circulated ideas about geology in England at the time and he also coined the currently-used names for geological eras, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic. He incorrectly conjectured that icebergs may be the emphasis behind the transport of glacial erratics, Lyell was one of the first to believe that the world is older than 300 million years, on the basis of its geological anomalies. He was a friend of Charles Darwin, and contributed significantly to Darwins thinking on the processes involved in evolution. He helped to arrange the publication in 1858 of papers by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace on natural selection. He later published evidence from geology of the man had existed on Earth. Lyell was born 14 November 1797 in Scotland about 15 miles north of Dundee in Kinnordy and he was the eldest of ten children. Lyells father, also named Charles Lyell, was a lawyer and botanist of minor repute, the house/place of his birth is located in the north-west of the Central Lowlands in the valley of the Highland Boundary Fault. Round the house, in the valley, is farmland. His familys second home was in a different geological and ecological area, he spent much of his childhood at Bartley Lodge in the New Forest. Lyell entered Exeter College, Oxford, in 1816, and attended William Bucklands lectures and he graduated BA second class in classics, December 1819, and M. A.1821. After graduation he took up law as a profession, entering Lincolns Inn in 1820 and he completed a circuit through rural England, where he could observe geological phenomena. In 1821 he attended Robert Jamesons lectures in Edinburgh, and visited Gideon Mantell at Lewes, in 1823 he was elected joint secretary of the Geological Society. As his eyesight began to deteriorate, he turned to geology as a full-time profession and his first paper, On a recent formation of freshwater limestone in Forfarshire, was presented in 1822. In 1832, Lyell married Mary Horner in Bonn, daughter of Leonard Horner, the new couple spent their honeymoon in Switzerland and Italy on a geological tour of the area. During the 1840s, Lyell travelled to the United States and Canada, after the Great Chicago Fire, Lyell was one of the first to donate books to help found the Chicago Public Library. In 1866, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Lyells wife died in 1873, and two years later Lyell himself died as he was revising the twelfth edition of Principles and he is buried in Westminster Abbey
11.
Geologist
–
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes that shape it. Geologists usually study geology, although backgrounds in physics, chemistry, biology, field work is an important component of geology, although many subdisciplines incorporate laboratory work. Some geologists work in the mining business searching for metals, oils and they are also in the forefront of natural hazards and disasters prevention and mitigation, studying natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanic activity, tsunamis, weather storms. Their studies are used to warn the public of the occurrence of these events. Geologists are also important contributors to climate change discussions, james Hutton is often viewed as the first modern geologist. In 1785 he presented a paper entitled Theory of the Earth to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Hutton published a two-volume version of his ideas in 1795. The first geological map of the U. S. was produced in 1809 by William Maclure, in 1807, Maclure commenced the self-imposed task of making a geological survey of the United States. Almost every state in the Union was traversed and mapped by him and this antedates William Smiths geological map of England by six years, although it was constructed using a different classification of rocks. Sir Charles Lyell first published his famous book, Principles of Geology and this book, which influenced the thought of Charles Darwin, successfully promoted the doctrine of uniformitarianism. This theory states that slow geological processes have occurred throughout the Earths history and are still occurring today, in contrast, catastrophism is the theory that Earths features formed in single, catastrophic events and remained unchanged thereafter. Though Hutton believed in uniformitarianism, the idea was not widely accepted at the time, most geologists also need skills in GIS and other mapping techniques. Geology students often spend portions of the year, especially the summer though sometimes during a January term, geologists may concentrate their studies or research in one or more of the following disciplines, Dendrochronology, the study of dating based on tree ring patterns. Economic geology, the study of ore genesis, and the mechanisms of ore creation, geochemistry, the applied branch deals with the study of the chemical makeup and behaviour of rocks, and the study of the behaviour of their minerals. Geochronology, the study of isotope geology specifically toward determining the date within the past of rock formation, metamorphism, mineralization and geological events. Geomorphology, the study of landforms and the processes that create them Hydrogeology, igneous petrology, the study of igneous processes such as igneous differentiation, fractional crystallization, intrusive and volcanological phenomena. Isotope geology, the case of the composition of rocks to determine the processes of rock. Metamorphic petrology, the study of the effects of metamorphism on minerals, marine geology, the study of the seafloor, involves geophysical, geochemical, sedimentological and paleontological investigations of the ocean floor and coastal margins. Marine geology has strong ties to physical oceanography and plate tectonics, palaeoclimatology, the application of geological science to determine the climatic conditions present in the Earths atmosphere within the Earths history
12.
Physician
–
Both the role of the physician and the meaning of the word itself vary around the world. Degrees and other qualifications vary widely, but there are common elements, such as medical ethics requiring that physicians show consideration, compassion. Around the world the term refers to a specialist in internal medicine or one of its many sub-specialties. This meaning of physician conveys a sense of expertise in treatment by drugs or medications and this term is at least nine hundred years old in English, physicians and surgeons were once members of separate professions, and traditionally were rivals. Henry VIII granted a charter to the London Royal College of Physicians in 1518 and it was not until 1540 that he granted the Company of Barber/Surgeons its separate charter. In the same year, the English monarch established the Regius Professorship of Physic at the University of Cambridge, newer universities would probably describe such an academic as a professor of internal medicine. Hence, in the 16th century, physic meant roughly what internal medicine does now, currently, a specialist physician in the United States may be described as an internist. Another term, hospitalist, was introduced in 1996, to describe US specialists in internal medicine who work largely or exclusively in hospitals, such hospitalists now make up about 19% of all US general internists, who are often called general physicians in Commonwealth countries. In such places, the more general English terms doctor or medical practitioner are prevalent, in Commonwealth countries, specialist pediatricians and geriatricians are also described as specialist physicians who have sub-specialized by age of patient rather than by organ system. Around the world, the term physician and surgeon is used to describe either a general practitioner or any medical practitioner irrespective of specialty. This usage still shows the meaning of physician and preserves the old difference between a physician, as a practitioner of physic, and a surgeon. The term may be used by state medical boards in the United States of America, in modern English, the term physician is used in two main ways, with relatively broad and narrow meanings respectively. This is the result of history and is often confusing and these meanings and variations are explained below. In the United States and Canada, the term physician describes all medical practitioners holding a professional medical degree, the American Medical Association, established in 1847, as well as the American Osteopathic Association, founded in 1897, both currently use the term physician to describe members. However, the American College of Physicians, established in 1915, does not, its title uses physician in its original sense. A physician trained in the United States has either a Doctor of Medicine degree, all boards of certification now require that physicians demonstrate, by examination, continuing mastery of the core knowledge and skills for a chosen specialty. Recertification varies by particular specialty between every seven and every ten years, graduates of osteopathic medical schools in the United States should not be confused with osteopaths, who are trained in the European and Commonwealth nations. Their training is similar to physical therapy and they are not licensed to prescribe medications or perform surgeries, also in the United States, the American Podiatric Medical Association defines podiatrists as physicians and surgeons that fall under the department of surgery in hospitals
13.
Chemist
–
A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties, chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms. Chemists carefully measure substance proportions, reaction rates, and other chemical properties, the word chemist is also used to address Pharmacists in Commonwealth English. Chemists may specialize in any number of subdisciplines of chemistry, materials scientists and metallurgists share much of the same education and skills with chemists. The roots of chemistry can be traced to the phenomenon of burning, fire was a mystical force that transformed one substance into another and thus was of primary interest to mankind. It was fire that led to the discovery of iron and glasses, after gold was discovered and became a precious metal, many people were interested to find a method that could convert other substances into gold. This led to the protoscience called alchemy, the word chemist is derived from the New Latin noun chimista, an abbreviation of alchimista. Alchemists discovered many chemical processes that led to the development of modern chemistry, Chemistry as we know it today, was invented by Antoine Lavoisier with his law of conservation of mass in 1783. The discoveries of the elements has a long history culminating in the creation of the periodic table by Dmitri Mendeleev. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry created in 1901 gives an excellent overview of chemical discovery since the start of the 20th century. Jobs for chemists usually require at least a degree, but many positions, especially those in research. At the Masters level and higher, students tend to specialize in a particular field, postdoctoral experience may be required for certain positions. Workers whose work involves chemistry, but not at a complexity requiring an education with a degree, are commonly referred to as chemical technicians. Such technicians commonly do such work as simpler, routine analyses for quality control or in clinical laboratories, there are also degrees specific to become a Chemical Technologist, which are somewhat distinct from those required when a student is interested in becoming a professional Chemist. A Chemical technologist is more involved in the management and operation of the equipment and they are part of the team of a chemical laboratory in which the quality of the raw material, intermediate products and finished products is analyzed. They also perform functions in the areas of quality control. The higher the level achieved in the field of Chemistry, the higher the responsibility given to that chemist. Chemistry, as a field, have so many applications that different tasks/objectives can be given to workers/scientists with these different levels of education and/or experience
14.
Natural history
–
Natural history is the research and study of organisms including animals, fungi and plants in their environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. It encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it, with articles nowadays more often published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the sciences, natural history is the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms. That is a broad designation in a world filled with many narrowly focused disciplines. For example, geobiology has a strong multi-disciplinary nature combining scientists, a person who studies natural history is known as a naturalist or natural historian. The English term natural history is a translation of the Latin historia naturalis and its meaning has narrowed progressively with time, while the meaning of the related term nature has widened. In antiquity, it covered essentially anything connected with nature or which used materials drawn from nature. For example, Pliny the Elders encyclopedia of this title, published circa 77 to 79 AD, covers astronomy, geography, man and his technology, medicine and superstition as well as animals and plants. Medieval European academics considered knowledge to have two divisions, the humanities and divinity, with science studied largely through texts rather than observation or experiment. In modern terms, natural philosophy roughly corresponded to modern physics and chemistry, natural history had been encouraged by practical motives, such as Linnaeus aspiration to improve the economic condition of Sweden. Similarly, the Industrial Revolution prompted the development of geology to help find useful mineral deposits, the astronomer, William Herschel was also a natural historian. Instead of working with plants or minerals he worked with the stars and he spent his time building telescopes to see the stars and the rest of the time watching the stars. In the beginning, he believed there to be a known as a nebulae. Herschel can be considered a natural historian because he observed the natural world, in the process he made charts of all the stars and kept records of all that he saw. S. Wilcove and T. Eisner, The close observation of organisms—their origins, their evolution, their behavior and it encompasses changes in internal states insofar as they pertain to what organisms do. Some definitions go further, focusing on observation of organisms in their environment. Bartholomew, A student of history, or a naturalist, studies the world by observing plants. A common thread in many definitions of natural history is the inclusion of a component, as seen in a recent definition by H. W. Greene
15.
Agricultural science
–
The three terms are often confused. However, they cover different concepts, Agriculture is the set of activities that transform the environment for the production of animals, Agriculture concerns techniques, including the application of agronomic research. Agronomy is research and development related to studying and improving plant-based crops, food production and demand on a global basis, with special attention paid to the major producers, such as China, India, Brazil, the USA and the EU. It can be considered a science of ecoregions, because it is linked to soil properties and climate. Many people think an agricultural production system relying on local weather, soil characteristics, others feel a need to know and understand production systems in as many areas as possible, and the human dimension of interaction with nature. In the United States, a revolution in agriculture began with the Hatch Act of 1887. The Hatch Act was driven by farmers interest in knowing the constituents of early artificial fertilizer, the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 shifted agricultural education back to its vocational roots, but the scientific foundation had been built. After 1906, public expenditures on agricultural research in the US exceeded private expenditures for the next 44 years, in fact, the interaction between these two approaches provide a fertile field for deeper understanding in agricultural science. Recent crises illustrate the complexity and importance of this debate,1977 Russell E.3, ju.2002 Saltini Antonio, Storia delle scienze agrarie,4 vols, Bologna 1984-89, ISBN 88-206-2412-5, ISBN 88-206-2413-3, ISBN 88-206-2414-1, ISBN 88-206-2415-X Vavilov Nicolai I. The Origin, Variation, Immunity and Breeding of Cultivated Plants, selected Writings, in Chronica botanica,13, 1-6, Waltham, Mass. Cinquante ans de recherches, Masson & c
16.
Uniformitarianism
–
Uniformitarianism is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe. Though an unprovable postulate that cannot be verified using the scientific method, coined by William Whewell, it was originally proposed in contrast to catastrophism by British naturalists in the late 18th century, starting with the work of the Scottish geologist James Hutton. Huttons work was refined by John Playfair and popularised by Charles Lyells Principles of Geology in 1830. The earlier conceptions likely had influence on 18th-century European geological explanations for the formation of Earth. Abraham Gottlob Werner proposed Neptunism, where strata represented deposits from shrinking seas precipitated onto primordial rocks such as granite, in 1785 James Hutton proposed an opposing, self-maintaining infinite cycle based on natural history and not on the Biblical account. The solid parts of the present land appear in general, to have composed of the productions of the sea. Hence we find reason to conclude, 1st, That the land on which we rest is not simple and original, but that it is a composition, and had been formed by the operation of second causes. 2nd, That before the present land was made, there had subsisted a world composed of sea and land, in which were tides and currents, with such operations at the bottom of the sea as now take place. Both Playfair and Hall wrote their own books on the theory, georges Cuviers paleontological work in the 1790s, which established the reality of extinction, explained this by local catastrophes, after which other fixed species repopulated the affected areas. From 1830 to 1833 Charles Lyells multi-volume Principles of Geology was published, the works subtitle was An attempt to explain the former changes of the Earths surface by reference to causes now in operation. The terms uniformitarianism for this idea, and catastrophism for the opposing viewpoint, were coined by William Whewell in a review of Lyells book, Principles of Geology was the most influential geological work in the middle of the 19th century. According to Reijer Hooykaas, Lyells uniformitarianism is a family of four related propositions, not an idea, Uniformity of law – the laws of nature are constant across time. Uniformity of methodology – the appropriate hypotheses for explaining the geological past are those with analogy today, Uniformity of kind – past and present causes are all of the same kind, have the same energy, and produce the same effects. Uniformity of degree – geological circumstances have remained the same over time, none of these connotations requires another, and they are not all equally inferred by uniformitarians. The four together make up Lyells uniformitarianism, the two methodological assumptions below are accepted to be true by the majority of scientists and geologists. Gould claims that these propositions must be assumed before you can proceed as a scientist doing science. You cannot go to an outcrop and observe either the constancy of natures laws or the working of unknown processes. It works the way around
17.
Crust (geology)
–
In geology, the crust is the outermost solid shell of a rocky planet or natural satellite, which is chemically distinct from the underlying mantle. The crust of the Earth is composed of a variety of igneous, metamorphic. The crust is underlain by the mantle, the upper part of the mantle is composed mostly of peridotite, a rock denser than rocks common in the overlying crust. The boundary between the crust and mantle is conventionally placed at the Mohorovičić discontinuity, a boundary defined by a contrast in seismic velocity, the crust occupies less than 1% of Earths volume. The crust of the Earth is of two types, oceanic and continental. The oceanic crust is 5 km to 10 km thick and is composed primarily of basalt, diabase, the continental crust is typically from 30 km to 50 km thick and is mostly composed of slightly less dense rocks than those of the oceanic crust. Some of these less dense rocks, such as granite, are common in the continental crust, both the continental and oceanic crust float on the mantle. Because the continental crust is thicker, it both to greater elevations and greater depth than the oceanic crust. The slightly lower density of continental rock compared to basaltic oceanic rock contributes to the higher relative elevation of the top of the continental crust. As the top of the continental crust reaches elevations higher than that of the oceanic, the temperature of the crust increases with depth, reaching values typically in the range from about 200 °C to 400 °C at the boundary with the underlying mantle. The crust and underlying relatively rigid uppermost mantle make up the lithosphere, because of convection in the underlying plastic upper mantle and asthenosphere, the lithosphere is broken into tectonic plates that move. The temperature increases by as much as 30 °C for every kilometer locally in the part of the crust. Earth has probably always had some form of basaltic crust, in contrast, the bulk of the continental crust is much older. The oldest continental crustal rocks on Earth have ages in the range from about 3.7 to 4, some zircon with age as great as 4.3 billion years has been found in the Narryer Gneiss Terrane. The average age of the current Earths continental crust has been estimated to be about 2.0 billion years, most crustal rocks formed before 2.5 billion years ago are located in cratons. Such old continental crust and the underlying mantle asthenosphere are less dense than elsewhere in Earth, formation of new continental crust is linked to periods of intense orogeny, these periods coincide with the formation of the supercontinents such as Rodinia, Pangaea and Gondwana. The continental crust has a composition similar to that of andesite. The most abundant minerals in Earths continental crust are feldspars, which make up about 41% of the crust by weight, followed by quartz at 12%, Continental crust is enriched in incompatible elements compared to the basaltic ocean crust and much enriched compared to the underlying mantle
18.
Geologic time scale
–
The table of geologic time spans, presented here, agrees with the nomenclature, dates and standard color codes set forth by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. Evidence from radiometric dating indicates that Earth is about 4.54 billion years old, the geology or deep time of Earth’s past has been organized into various units according to events which took place in each period. Older time spans, which predate the reliable record, are defined by their absolute age. Some other planets and moons within the Solar System have sufficiently rigid structures to have preserved records of their own histories, for example, Venus, Mars, dominantly fluid planets, such as the gas giants, do not preserve their history in a comparable manner. Apart from the Late Heavy Bombardment, events on other planets probably had little influence on the Earth. Construction of a scale that links the planets is, therefore, of only limited relevance to the Earths time scale. The existence, timing, and terrestrial effects of the Late Heavy Bombardment is still debated, the largest defined unit of time is the supereon, composed of eons. Eons are divided into eras, which are in turn divided into periods, epochs, the terms eonothem, erathem, system, series, and stage are used to refer to the layers of rock that correspond to these periods of geologic time in Earths history. Geologists qualify these units as early, mid, and late when referring to time, and lower, middle, for example, the lower Jurassic Series in chronostratigraphy corresponds to the early Jurassic Epoch in geochronology. The adjectives are capitalized when the subdivision is formally recognized, and lower case when not, thus early Miocene but Early Jurassic. Geologic units from the time but different parts of the world often look different and contain different fossils. For example, in North America the Lower Cambrian is called the Waucoban series that is subdivided into zones based on succession of trilobites. In East Asia and Siberia, the unit is split into Alexian, Atdabanian. A key aspect of the work of the International Commission on Stratigraphy is to reconcile this conflicting terminology, the term Anthropocene is used informally by popular culture and a growing number of scientists to describe the current epoch in which we are living. The term was coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 to describe the current time, others say that humans have not even started to leave their biggest impact on Earth, and therefore the Anthropocene hasnt even started yet. Whatever the case, the ICS has not officially approved the term, leonardo da Vinci concurred with Aristotles interpretation that fossils represented the remains of ancient life. The 11th-century Persian geologist Avicenna and the 13th-century Dominican bishop Albertus Magnus extended Aristotles explanation into a theory of a petrifying fluid. Avicenna also first proposed one of the principles underlying geologic time scales, the Chinese naturalist Shen Kuo also recognized the concept of deep time
19.
Earth
–
Earth, otherwise known as the World, or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets, according to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earths gravity interacts with objects in space, especially the Sun. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its axis over 365 times, thus, Earths axis of rotation is tilted, producing seasonal variations on the planets surface. The gravitational interaction between the Earth and Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes the Earths orientation on its axis, Earths lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earths surface is covered with water, mostly by its oceans, the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes, rivers and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. The majority of Earths polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet, Earths interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earths magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earths history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earths atmosphere and surface, some geological evidence indicates that life may have arisen as much as 4.1 billion years ago. Since then, the combination of Earths distance from the Sun, physical properties, in the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion, occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely, over 7.4 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Humans have developed diverse societies and cultures, politically, the world has about 200 sovereign states, the modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most often spelled eorðe. It has cognates in every Germanic language, and their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō, originally, earth was written in lowercase, and from early Middle English, its definite sense as the globe was expressed as the earth. By early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, and the became the Earth. More recently, the name is simply given as Earth. House styles now vary, Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, another convention capitalizes Earth when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the. It almost always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as what on earth are you doing, the oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4. 5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4. 54±0.04 Gya the primordial Earth had formed, the formation and evolution of Solar System bodies occurred along with the Sun
20.
History of Earth
–
The history of Earth concerns the development of the planet Earth from its formation to the present day. Nearly all branches of science have contributed to the understanding of the main events of the Earths past. The age of Earth is approximately one-third of the age of the universe, an immense amount of geological change has occurred in that timespan, accompanied by the emergence of life and its subsequent evolution. Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago by accretion from the solar nebula, volcanic outgassing probably created the primordial atmosphere and then the ocean, but the atmosphere contained almost no oxygen and so would have been toxic to most modern life including humans. Much of the Earth was molten because of frequent collisions with other bodies which led to extreme volcanism. A giant impact collision with a body named Theia while Earth was in its earliest stage. Over time, the Earth cooled, causing the formation of a solid crust, the geological time scale clock depicts the larger spans of time from the beginning of the Earth as well as a chronology of some definitive events of Earth history. The Archean and Proterozoic eons follow, they produced the abiogenesis of life on Earth, there are microbial mat fossils such as stromatolites found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia. According to one of the researchers, If life arose relatively quickly on Earth … then it could be common in the universe, living forms derived from photosynthesis appeared between 3.2 and 2.4 billion years ago and began enriching the atmosphere with oxygen. More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to five billion species. Estimates on the number of Earths current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described. More recently, in May 2016, scientists reported that 1 trillion species are estimated to be on Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described. Geological change has been a constant of Earths crust since the time of its formation, species continue to evolve, taking on new forms, splitting into daughter species or going extinct in the process of adapting or dying in response to ever-changing physical environments. The process of plate tectonics continues to play a dominant role in the shaping of Earths oceans and continents, in geochronology, time is generally measured in mya, each unit representing the period of approximately 1,000,000 years in the past. The history of Earth is divided into four great eons, starting 4,540 mya with the formation of the planet, each eon saw the most significant changes in Earths composition, climate and life. Each eon is divided into eras, which in turn are divided into periods. The history of the Earth can be organized according to the geologic time scale. The following four timelines show the time scale
21.
Erosion
–
In earth science, erosion is the action of surface processes that remove soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earths crust, then transport it away to another location. Eroded sediment or solutes may be transported just a few millimetres, the rates at which such processes act control how fast a surface is eroded. Feedbacks are also possible between rates of erosion and the amount of eroded material that is carried by, for example. Processes of erosion that produce sediment or solutes from a place contrast with those of deposition, while erosion is a natural process, human activities have increased by 10-40 times the rate at which erosion is occurring globally. At well-known agriculture sites such as the Appalachian Mountains, intensive farming practices have caused erosion up to 100x the speed of the rate of erosion in the region. Excessive erosion causes both on-site and off-site problems, on-site impacts include decreases in agricultural productivity and ecological collapse, both because of loss of the nutrient-rich upper soil layers. In some cases, the end result is desertification. Off-site effects include sedimentation of waterways and eutrophication of bodies, as well as sediment-related damage to roads. Intensive agriculture, deforestation, roads, anthropogenic climate change and urban sprawl are amongst the most significant human activities in regard to their effect on stimulating erosion, however, there are many prevention and remediation practices that can curtail or limit erosion of vulnerable soils. Rainfall, and the surface runoff which may result from rainfall, produces four types of soil erosion, splash erosion, sheet erosion, rill erosion. Splash erosion is generally seen as the first and least severe stage in the erosion process. In splash erosion, the impact of a falling raindrop creates a crater in the soil. The distance these soil particles travel can be as much as 0.6 m vertically and 1.5 m horizontally on level ground. If the soil is saturated, or if the rate is greater than the rate at which water can infiltrate into the soil. If the runoff has sufficient flow energy, it will transport loosened soil particles down the slope, sheet erosion is the transport of loosened soil particles by overland flow. Rill erosion refers to the development of small, ephemeral concentrated flow paths which function as both sediment source and sediment delivery systems for erosion on hillslopes, generally, where water erosion rates on disturbed upland areas are greatest, rills are active. Flow depths in rills are typically of the order of a few centimetres or less and this means that rills exhibit hydraulic physics very different from water flowing through the deeper, wider channels of streams and rivers. Gully erosion occurs when water accumulates and rapidly flows in narrow channels during or immediately after heavy rains or melting snow
22.
Sedimentation
–
Sedimentation is the tendency for particles in suspension to settle out of the fluid in which they are entrained and come to rest against a barrier. This is due to their motion through the fluid in response to the acting on them. In geology, sedimentation is often used as the opposite of erosion, in that sense, it includes the termination of transport by saltation or true bedload transport. Settling is the falling of suspended particles through the liquid, whereas sedimentation is the termination of the settling process, in estuarine environments, settling can be influenced by the presence or absence of vegetation. Trees such as mangroves are crucial to the attenuation of waves or currents, even small molecules supply a sufficiently strong force to produce significant sedimentation. This process is used in the biotech industry to separate cells from the culture media. In a sedimentation experiment, the applied force accelerates the particles to a velocity v t e r m at which the applied force is exactly canceled by an opposing drag force. For small enough particles, the force varies linearly with the terminal velocity, i. e. F d r a g = f v t e r m where f depends only on the properties of the particle. Thus, measuring s can reveal underlying properties of the particle, in many cases, the motion of the particles is blocked by a hard boundary, the resulting accumulation of particles at the boundary is called a sediment. The concentration of particles at the boundary is opposed by the diffusion of the particles, the sedimentation of a single particle under gravity is described by the Mason–Weaver equation, which has a simple exact solution. The sedimentation coefficient s in this case equals m b / f, the sedimentation of a single particle under centrifugal force is described by the Lamm equation, which likewise has an exact solution. The sedimentation coefficient s also equals m b / f, where m b is the buoyant mass, the Lamm equation also has extra terms, since it pertains to sector-shaped cells, whereas the Mason–Weaver equation is one-dimensional. They settle as individual particles and do not flocculate or stick to other during settling, example, alum or iron coagulation Type 3 sedimentation is also known as zone sedimentation. In this process the particles are at a high concentration such that the particles tend to settle as a mass, zone settling occurs in lime-softening, sedimentation, active sludge sedimentation and sludge thickeners. In geology, sedimentation is the deposition of particles carried by a fluid flow, for suspended load, this can be expressed mathematically by the Exner equation, and results in the formation of depositional landforms and the rocks that constitute sedimentary record. An undesired increased transport and sedimentation of suspended material is called siltation, high sedimentation rates can be a result of poor land management and a high frequency of flooding events. If not managed properly, it can be detrimental to fragile ecosystems on the receiving end, climate change also affects siltation rates. In chemistry, sedimentation has been used to measure the size of large molecules, where the force of gravity is augmented with centrifugal force in an ultracentrifuge
23.
Royal High School, Edinburgh
–
For the A-listed building on Calton Hill, see Old Royal High School, Edinburgh. The Royal High School of Edinburgh is a school administered by the City of Edinburgh Council. The school was founded in 1128 and is one of the oldest schools in Scotland and it serves 1,200 pupils drawn from four feeder primaries in the north-west of the city, Blackhall, Clermiston, Cramond and Davidsons Mains. The Royal High School was last inspected by HMIE in April 2007, the rector is Pauline Walker who replaced Jane Frith, the first woman to head the school. The Royal High School is, by one reckoning, the 18th-oldest school in the world, historians associate its birth with the flowering of the 12th century renaissance. It first enters the record as the seminary of Holyrood Abbey, founded for Alwin. In 1505 the school was described as a school, the first recorded use of this term in either Scotland or England. In 1584 the Town Council informed the rector, Hercules Rollock, as far as possible, instruction was carried out in Latin. The study of Greek began in 1614, and geography in 1742, the egalitarian spirit of Scotland and the classical tradition exerted a profound influence on the school culture and the Scottish Enlightenment. The historian William Ross notes, Walter Scott stood head and shoulders above his literary contemporaries, the Royal High School was used as a model for the first public high school in the United States, the English High School of Boston, in 1821. Learning Greek ceased to be compulsory in 1836, and the allotted to its study was reduced in 1839 as mathematics became recognised. In 1866 classical masters were confined to teaching Latin and Greek, a modern and commercial course was introduced in 1873. A school choir was instituted in 1895, the Jocks Lodge site is now the Royal High Primary, and is no longer associated with the secondary school. For many years the school maintained a facility for pupils from outside Edinburgh. The boarders ranged in age six to eighteen. The House, as it was known, was located at 24 Royal Terrace and in later years moved to 13 Royal Terrace. When the boarding house was closed the records of all boarders, the artefacts such as the board with the names of boys. The Royal High School moved to its current site at Barnton in 1968, in 1973 it became a co-educational state comprehensive
24.
Mathematics
–
Mathematics is the study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. There is a range of views among mathematicians and philosophers as to the exact scope, Mathematicians seek out patterns and use them to formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proof, when mathematical structures are good models of real phenomena, then mathematical reasoning can provide insight or predictions about nature. Through the use of abstraction and logic, mathematics developed from counting, calculation, measurement, practical mathematics has been a human activity from as far back as written records exist. The research required to solve mathematical problems can take years or even centuries of sustained inquiry, rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclids Elements. Galileo Galilei said, The universe cannot be read until we have learned the language and it is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth, carl Friedrich Gauss referred to mathematics as the Queen of the Sciences. Benjamin Peirce called mathematics the science that draws necessary conclusions, David Hilbert said of mathematics, We are not speaking here of arbitrariness in any sense. Mathematics is not like a game whose tasks are determined by arbitrarily stipulated rules, rather, it is a conceptual system possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no means otherwise. Albert Einstein stated that as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, Mathematics is essential in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, finance and the social sciences. Applied mathematics has led to entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics, Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind. There is no clear line separating pure and applied mathematics, the history of mathematics can be seen as an ever-increasing series of abstractions. The earliest uses of mathematics were in trading, land measurement, painting and weaving patterns, in Babylonian mathematics elementary arithmetic first appears in the archaeological record. Numeracy pre-dated writing and numeral systems have many and diverse. Between 600 and 300 BC the Ancient Greeks began a study of mathematics in its own right with Greek mathematics. Mathematics has since been extended, and there has been a fruitful interaction between mathematics and science, to the benefit of both. Mathematical discoveries continue to be made today, the overwhelming majority of works in this ocean contain new mathematical theorems and their proofs. The word máthēma is derived from μανθάνω, while the modern Greek equivalent is μαθαίνω, in Greece, the word for mathematics came to have the narrower and more technical meaning mathematical study even in Classical times
25.
Chemistry
–
Chemistry is a branch of physical science that studies the composition, structure, properties and change of matter. Chemistry is sometimes called the science because it bridges other natural sciences, including physics. For the differences between chemistry and physics see comparison of chemistry and physics, the history of chemistry can be traced to alchemy, which had been practiced for several millennia in various parts of the world. The word chemistry comes from alchemy, which referred to a set of practices that encompassed elements of chemistry, metallurgy, philosophy, astrology, astronomy, mysticism. An alchemist was called a chemist in popular speech, and later the suffix -ry was added to this to describe the art of the chemist as chemistry, the modern word alchemy in turn is derived from the Arabic word al-kīmīā. In origin, the term is borrowed from the Greek χημία or χημεία and this may have Egyptian origins since al-kīmīā is derived from the Greek χημία, which is in turn derived from the word Chemi or Kimi, which is the ancient name of Egypt in Egyptian. Alternately, al-kīmīā may derive from χημεία, meaning cast together, in retrospect, the definition of chemistry has changed over time, as new discoveries and theories add to the functionality of the science. The term chymistry, in the view of noted scientist Robert Boyle in 1661, in 1837, Jean-Baptiste Dumas considered the word chemistry to refer to the science concerned with the laws and effects of molecular forces. More recently, in 1998, Professor Raymond Chang broadened the definition of chemistry to mean the study of matter, early civilizations, such as the Egyptians Babylonians, Indians amassed practical knowledge concerning the arts of metallurgy, pottery and dyes, but didnt develop a systematic theory. Greek atomism dates back to 440 BC, arising in works by such as Democritus and Epicurus. In 50 BC, the Roman philosopher Lucretius expanded upon the theory in his book De rerum natura, unlike modern concepts of science, Greek atomism was purely philosophical in nature, with little concern for empirical observations and no concern for chemical experiments. Work, particularly the development of distillation, continued in the early Byzantine period with the most famous practitioner being the 4th century Greek-Egyptian Zosimos of Panopolis. He formulated Boyles law, rejected the four elements and proposed a mechanistic alternative of atoms. Before his work, though, many important discoveries had been made, the Scottish chemist Joseph Black and the Dutchman J. B. English scientist John Dalton proposed the theory of atoms, that all substances are composed of indivisible atoms of matter. Davy discovered nine new elements including the alkali metals by extracting them from their oxides with electric current, british William Prout first proposed ordering all the elements by their atomic weight as all atoms had a weight that was an exact multiple of the atomic weight of hydrogen. The inert gases, later called the noble gases were discovered by William Ramsay in collaboration with Lord Rayleigh at the end of the century, thereby filling in the basic structure of the table. Organic chemistry was developed by Justus von Liebig and others, following Friedrich Wöhlers synthesis of urea which proved that organisms were, in theory
26.
Classics
–
Classics or Classical Studies is the study of classical antiquity. It encompasses the study of the Graeco-Roman world, particularly of its languages, and literature but also it encompasses the study of Graeco-Roman philosophy, history, and archaeology. Traditionally in the West, the study of the Greek and Roman classics was considered one of the cornerstones of the humanities and it has been traditionally a cornerstone of a typical elite education. The word Classics is derived from the Latin adjective classicus, meaning belonging to the highest class of citizens, the word was originally used to describe the members of the highest class in ancient Rome. By the 2nd century AD the word was used in literary criticism to describe writers of the highest quality, for example, Aulus Gellius, in his Attic Nights, contrasts classicus and proletarius writers. By the 6th century AD, the word had acquired a meaning, referring to pupils at a school. Thus the two meanings of the word, referring both to literature considered to be of the highest quality, and to the standard texts used as part of a curriculum. In the Middle Ages, classics and education were tightly intertwined, according to Jan Ziolkowski, while Latin was hugely influential, however, Greek was barely studied, and Greek literature survived almost solely in Latin translation. The works of even major Greek authors such as Hesiod, whose names continued to be known by educated Europeans, were unavailable in the Middle Ages. Along with the unavailability of Greek authors, there were differences between the classical canon known today and the works valued in the Middle Ages. Catullus, for instance, was almost entirely unknown in the medieval period, the Renaissance led to the increasing study of both ancient literature and ancient history, as well as a revival of classical styles of Latin. From the 14th century, first in Italy and then increasingly across Europe, Renaissance Humanism, Humanism saw a reform in education in Europe, introducing a wider range of Latin authors as well as bringing back the study of Greek language and literature to Western Europe. This reintroduction was initiated by Petrarch and Boccaccio who commissioned a Calabrian scholar to translate the Homeric poems, the late 17th and 18th centuries are the period in Western European literary history which is most associated with the classical tradition, as writers consciously adapted classical models. Classical models were so prized that the plays of William Shakespeare were rewritten along neoclassical lines. From the beginning of the 18th century, the study of Greek became increasingly important relative to that of Latin, in this period Johann Winckelmanns claims for the superiority of the Greek visual arts influenced a shift in aesthetic judgements, while in the literary sphere, G. E. Lessing returned Homer to the centre of artistic achievement, in the United Kingdom, the study of Greek in schools began in the late 18th century. The poet Walter Savage Landor claimed to have one of the first English schoolboys to write in Greek during his time at Rugby School. The 19th century saw the influence of the world, and the value of a classical education, decline, especially in the US
27.
Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet
–
The Society of Writers to Her Majesty’s Signet is a private society of Scottish solicitors, dating back to 1594 and part of the College of Justice. The Society maintains the Category A listed Signet Library, part of the Parliament House complex in Edinburgh, and members of the Society are entitled to the postnominal letters, WS. Solicitors in Scotland were previously known as writers, Writers to the Signet were the solicitors entitled to use of the Kings Signet. Records of that use date back to 1369, in 1532, the Writers to the Signet were included as Members in the newly established College of Justice, along with the Faculty of Advocates and the Clerks of the Court of Session. The Society was established in 1594, when the Kings Secretary, as Keeper of the Signet, gave commissions to a Deputy Keeper and 18 other writers. In civil actions in the Court of Session, a pursuer is required to have his writ stamped with the Signet to give him authority from the Queen to serve the writ on the defender. That conferral, called passing the Signet, was carried out by the Signet Office. In 1976 the Signet Office was merged into the General Department of the Court of Session, nevertheless, the requirement of passing the Signet survived. Nowadays, these functions are no longer performed by the Society, the Keeper of the Signet is one of the Great Officers of State of Scotland, and is one of the offices held by the Lord Clerk Register. The current Keeper of the Signet is Lord Mackay of Clashfern, former Lord Advocate of Scotland, the office is now a purely ceremonial one, as the Keeper of the Signet grants a commission to the Principal Clerk of Session to allow the Signet to be used. The Keeper of the Signet is the officer of the Society of Writers to the Signet. Although the Society is a body, the Register of Commissions forms part of the records of the Court of Session. The Keeper does not exercise administrative functions over the Society, these being delegated to the Deputy Keeper, the present Deputy Keeper is Caroline Docherty, Consultant at Morton Fraser LLP. Jurists, advocates and foreign lawyers may be granted membership of the Society. Associate members are entitled to use the designation, Associate Writer to the Signet with the postnominal letters, prominent associate members include Harvey McGregor QC and the late former President of Poland, Lech Aleksander Kaczyński. Edinburgh City Chambers The Society of Writers to Her Majestys Signet
28.
Doctor of Medicine
–
The Doctor of Medicine is a terminal medical degree for practitioners of medicine. The meaning of the varies between different countries. In countries that follow the United States system, the M. D. denotes a first professional degree awarded upon initial graduation from medical school. In those countries, the title of the equivalent first professional degree is Bachelor of Medicine, in 1703, the University of Glasgows first medical graduate, Samuel Benion, was issued with the academic degree of Doctor of Medicine. North American medical schools switched to the tradition of the ancient universities of Scotland, the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York was the first American university to grant the MD degree instead of the MB. Early medical schools in North America that granted the Doctor of Medicine degrees were Columbia, Penn, Harvard, Maryland and these first few North American medical schools that were established were founded by physicians and surgeons who had been trained in England and Scotland. A feminine form, Doctress of Medicine or Medicinae Doctrix, has also used by the New England Female Medical College in Boston in the 1860s. The MD degree is earned in four years. Following the awarding of the MD, physicians who wish to practice in the United States are required to complete at least one internship year and those who wish to further specialize in areas such as cardiology or interventional radiology then complete a fellowship. Depending upon the chosen field, residencies and fellowships involve an additional three to eight years of training after obtaining the MD. This can be lengthened with additional research years, which can last one, the Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine or DO degree allows similar practice in the United States and Canada to the M. D. degree and Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine are fully licensed physicians. The M. D. degree is awarded only by the 137 Medical Schools in the United States, similarly, M. D. s must attend M. D. rated residency and fellowship programs while D. O. s can attend either type of program. The American M. D. degree is recognized by most countries in the world. While the D. O. degree is getting more widely accepted in countries as fully licensed physicians. In Canada, the MD is the medical degree required to practice medicine. McGill University Faculty of Medicine is the medical school in Canada that continues to award the MD. MDCM is from the Latin Medicinae Doctorem et Chirurgiae Magistrum meaning doctor of medicine, upon graduation, students enter into a residency phase of training. Combined medical and research training is offered through programs granting MD-PhD, the National Institutes of Health through its Medical Scientist Training Program funds MD-PhD training programs at many universities
29.
Leiden University
–
Leiden University, located in the city of Leiden, is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, the Dutch Royal Family and Leiden University still have a close relationship, Queens Juliana and Beatrix and King Willem-Alexander are all former students. Leiden University has seven faculties, over 50 departments and enjoys an international reputation. Shanghai Jiao Tong Universitys 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities ranked Leiden University as the 29th best university worldwide, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings consistently rank Leiden University as the best university in Continental Europe for Arts and Humanities. During this time Leiden was home to figures as René Descartes, Rembrandt, Christiaan Huygens, Hugo Grotius, Baruch Spinoza. The university is a member of the Coimbra Group, the Europaeum, Leiden University houses more than 40 national and international research institutes. In 1575, the emerging Dutch Republic did not have any universities in its northern heartland, the only other university in the Habsburg Netherlands was the University of Leuven in southern Leuven, firmly under Spanish control. It is said the choice fell on Leiden as a reward for the defence of Leiden against Spanish attacks in the previous year. Ironically, the name of Philip II of Spain, Williams adversary, appears on the foundation certificate. Philip II replied by forbidding any subject to study in Leiden, renowned philosopher Baruch Spinoza was based close to Leiden during this period and interacted with numerous scholars at the university. At the end of the century, Leiden University again became one of Europes leading universities. At the world’s first university low-temperature laboratory, professor Heike Kamerlingh Onnes achieved temperatures of one degree above absolute zero of −273 degrees Celsius. In 1908 he was also the first to succeed in liquifying helium, Kamerlingh Onnes was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1913. In 2005 the manuscript of Einstein on the theory of the monatomic ideal gas was discovered in one of Leidens libraries. Of the seventy-seven Spinozapremie, nineteen were granted to professors of the Universiteit Leiden, literary historian Frits van Oostrom was the first professor of Leiden to be granted the Spinoza award for his work on developing the NLCM centre into a top research centre. Among other leading professors are Wim Blockmans, professor of Medieval History, the portraits of many famous professors since the earliest days hang in the university aula, one of the most memorable places, as Niebuhr called it, in the history of science. The University Library, which has more than 5 and it houses the largest collections worldwide on Indonesia and the Caribbean. Scholars from all over the world visit Leiden University Library, the oldest in the Netherlands, the anatomical and pathological laboratories of the university are modern, and the museums of geology and mineralogy have been restored
30.
Ammonium chloride
–
Ammonium chloride is an inorganic compound with the formula NH4Cl and a white crystalline salt that is highly soluble in water. Solutions of ammonium chloride are mildly acidic, sal ammoniac is a name of the natural, mineralogical form of ammonium chloride. The mineral is formed on burning coal dumps from condensation of coal-derived gases. It is also found some types of volcanic vents. It is mainly used as fertilizer and an agent in some types of liquorice. It is the product from the reaction of acid and ammonia. The crystals deposit directly from the state and tend to be short-lived. Ammonium chloride appears to sublime upon heating but actually decomposes into ammonia, some of ammonium chlorides reactions with other chemicals are endothermic like its reaction with barium hydroxide and its dissolving in water. The main application of ammonium chloride is as a source in fertilizers such as chloroammonium phosphate. The main crops are rice and wheat in Asia, Ammonium chloride was used in pyrotechnics in the 18th century but was superseded by safer and less hygroscopic chemicals. Its purpose was to provide a donor to enhance the green. It had a use to provide white smoke, but its ready double decomposition reaction with potassium chlorate producing the highly unstable ammonium chlorate made its use very suspect. Ammonium chloride is used as a flux in preparing metals to be tin coated, galvanized or soldered and it works as a flux by cleaning the surface of workpieces by reacting with the metal oxides at the surface to form a volatile metal chloride. For that purpose, it is sold in blocks at hardware stores for use in cleaning the tip of a soldering iron, Ammonium chloride is used as an expectorant in cough medicine. Its expectorant action is caused by action on the bronchial mucosa, which causes the production of excess respiratory tract fluid. Ammonium salts are an irritant to the mucosa and may induce nausea. In several countries, ammonium chloride, under the name sal ammoniac or colloquially salmiakki is used as food additive under the E number E510 and it is a feed supplement for cattle and an ingredient in nutritive media for yeasts and many microorganisms. Ammonium chloride is used to spice up dark sweets called salty liquorice, in baking to give cookies a very crisp texture, in India and Pakistan, it is called Noshader and is used to improve the crispness of snacks such as samosas and jalebi
31.
Soot
–
Soot /ˈsʊt/ is a mass of impure carbon particles resulting from the incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons. Soot causes cancer and lung disease, and is the second-biggest human cause of global warming, Soot as an airborne contaminant in the environment has many different sources, all of which are results of some form of pyrolysis. Soot in very low concentrations is capable of darkening surfaces or making particle agglomerates, such as those from ventilation systems, Soot is the primary cause of ghosting, the discoloration of walls and ceilings or walls and flooring where they meet. It is generally responsible for the discoloration of the walls above baseboard electric heating units, the formation of soot depends strongly on the fuel composition. The rank ordering of sooting tendency of fuel components is, naphthalenes → benzenes → aliphatics, however, the order of sooting tendencies of the aliphatics varies dramatically depending on the flame type. The difference between the tendencies of aliphatics and aromatics is thought to result mainly from the different routes of formation. The formation of soot is a process, an evolution of matter in which a number of molecules undergo many chemical and physical reactions within a few milliseconds. Soot is a form of amorphous carbon. Gas-phase soot contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, the PAHs in soot are known mutagens and are classified as a known human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Soot forms during incomplete combustion from precursor molecules such as acetylene and it consists of agglomerated nanoparticles with diameters between 6 and 30 ㎚. The soot particles can be mixed with metal oxides and with minerals, many details of soot formation chemistry remain unanswered and controversial, but there have been a few agreements, Soot begins with some precursors or building blocks. Nucleation of heavy molecules occurs to form particles, surface growth of a particle proceeds by adsorption of gas phase molecules. Coagulation happens via reactive particle–particle collisions, oxidation of the molecules and soot particles reduces soot formation. Soot, particularly diesel exhaust pollution, accounts for one quarter of the total hazardous pollution in the air. Among these diesel emission components, particulate matter has been a concern for human health due to its direct. In earlier times, health professionals associated PM10 with chronic disease, lung cancer, influenza, asthma. However, recent scientific studies suggest that these correlations be more linked with fine particles. Long-term exposure to air pollution containing soot increases the risk of coronary artery disease
32.
Egypt
–
Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, the Red Sea to the east and south, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, and across from the Sinai Peninsula lies Saudi Arabia, although Jordan and it is the worlds only contiguous Afrasian nation. Egypt has among the longest histories of any country, emerging as one of the worlds first nation states in the tenth millennium BC. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt experienced some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. One of the earliest centres of Christianity, Egypt was Islamised in the century and remains a predominantly Muslim country. With over 92 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa and the Arab world, the third-most populous in Africa, and the fifteenth-most populous in the world. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres, the large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypts territory, are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypts residents live in areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria. Modern Egypt is considered to be a regional and middle power, with significant cultural, political, and military influence in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Egypts economy is one of the largest and most diversified in the Middle East, Egypt is a member of the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, Arab League, African Union, and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Miṣr is the Classical Quranic Arabic and modern name of Egypt. The name is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם, the oldest attestation of this name for Egypt is the Akkadian
33.
Berwickshire
–
Berwickshire is a lieutenancy area and historic county in the Scottish Borders. It takes its name from Berwick-upon-Tweed, which was part of Scotland at the time of the countys formation, formerly the county was often called the Merse, from Old English mǣres border. From 1596 to 1890 the county town was Greenlaw, however, this was changed to Duns by the Local Government Act 1889, the act which established the system of county councils in Scotland. Beriwckshire District Council remained based in Duns, the old county town, the system of regions and districts was in turn abolished in 1996 in favour of unitary councils. Berwickshire is now governed by the unitary Scottish Borders Council, the county council of Berwickshire was formed in 1890 by the Local Government Act 1889, and applied for a grant of arms the same year. The grant, by Lord Lyon King of Arms was made on 10 October, the coat of arms shows a bear chained to a wych elm tree, a pun on the countys name, bear + wych = Berwick. In heraldry, this is known as a canting arms, upon the abolition of Berwickshire County Council, the arms were regranted to Berwickshire District Council. When the district council was abolished the arms reverted to the Crown, the coat of arms is featured on Berwickshire High School badge Refer to the List of civil parishes in Scotland Other places in Berwickshire include, St. Abbs or Coldingham Shore. Allanton Clintmains Dryburgh Oxton Paxton The Berwickshire News is published weekly, the High school west of Duns is named Berwickshire High School, it has been open since 1896. Together with Eyemouth High School they run a Rugby team under the name of Berwickshire schools, the Berwickshire Coastal Path runs from Cockburnspath to Berwick-upon-Tweed. List of places in the Scottish Borders Subdivisions of Scotland
34.
Meteorology
–
Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences which includes atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric physics, with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century, the 19th century saw modest progress in the field after weather observation networks were formed across broad regions. Prior attempts at prediction of weather depended on historical data, Meteorological phenomena are observable weather events that are explained by the science of meteorology. Different spatial scales are used to describe and predict weather on local, regional, Meteorology, climatology, atmospheric physics, and atmospheric chemistry are sub-disciplines of the atmospheric sciences. Meteorology and hydrology compose the interdisciplinary field of hydrometeorology, the interactions between Earths atmosphere and its oceans are part of a coupled ocean-atmosphere system. Meteorology has application in diverse fields such as the military, energy production, transport, agriculture. The word meteorology is from Greek μετέωρος metéōros lofty, high and -λογία -logia -logy, varāhamihiras classical work Brihatsamhita, written about 500 AD, provides clear evidence that a deep knowledge of atmospheric processes existed even in those times. In 350 BC, Aristotle wrote Meteorology, Aristotle is considered the founder of meteorology. One of the most impressive achievements described in the Meteorology is the description of what is now known as the hydrologic cycle and they are all called swooping bolts because they swoop down upon the Earth. Lightning is sometimes smoky, and is then called smoldering lightning, sometimes it darts quickly along, at other times, it travels in crooked lines, and is called forked lightning. When it swoops down upon some object it is called swooping lightning, the Greek scientist Theophrastus compiled a book on weather forecasting, called the Book of Signs. The work of Theophrastus remained a dominant influence in the study of weather, in 25 AD, Pomponius Mela, a geographer for the Roman Empire, formalized the climatic zone system. According to Toufic Fahd, around the 9th century, Al-Dinawari wrote the Kitab al-Nabat, ptolemy wrote on the atmospheric refraction of light in the context of astronomical observations. St. Roger Bacon was the first to calculate the size of the rainbow. He stated that a rainbow summit can not appear higher than 42 degrees above the horizon, in the late 13th century and early 14th century, Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī and Theodoric of Freiberg were the first to give the correct explanations for the primary rainbow phenomenon. Theoderic went further and also explained the secondary rainbow, in 1716, Edmund Halley suggested that aurorae are caused by magnetic effluvia moving along the Earths magnetic field lines. In 1441, King Sejongs son, Prince Munjong, invented the first standardized rain gauge and these were sent throughout the Joseon Dynasty of Korea as an official tool to assess land taxes based upon a farmers potential harvest. In 1450, Leone Battista Alberti developed a swinging-plate anemometer, and was known as the first anemometer, in 1607, Galileo Galilei constructed a thermoscope
35.
John Playfair
–
John Playfair FRSE, FRS was a Scottish scientist and mathematician, and a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He is perhaps best known for his book Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth and it was through this book that Huttons principle of uniformitarianism, later taken up by Charles Lyell, first reached a wide audience. Playfairs textbook Elements of Geometry made an expression of Euclids parallel postulate known now as Playfairs axiom. Born at Benvie, near Dundee, where his father, Rev James Playfair, was a kirk minister, Playfair was educated at home until the age of fourteen, when he entered the University of St Andrews. In 1766, when only eighteen, he was a candidate for the chair of mathematics in Marischal College, Playfair continued, however, his mathematical and physical studies, and in 1782 he resigned his charge to become the tutor of Ferguson of Raith. By this arrangement, Playfair was able to be frequently in Edinburgh and to cultivate the literary, in particular, he attended the natural history course of John Walker. Through Nevil Maskelyne, whose acquaintance he had first made in the course of the celebrated Schiehallion experiments in 1774, in 1785 when Dugald Stewart succeeded Ferguson in the Edinburgh chair of moral philosophy, Playfair succeeded the former in that of mathematics. In 1795 Playfair published an alternative, more stringent formulation of Euclids parallel postulate, although the axiom bears Playfairs name, he did not create it, but credited others, in particular William Ludlam, with its prior use. In 1802, Playfair published his celebrated volume entitled Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, the influence exerted by James Hutton on the development of geology is thought to be largely due to its publication. In 1805 Playfair exchanged the chair of mathematics for that of philosophy in succession to John Robison. Playfair was an opponent of Gottfried Leibnizs vis viva principle, a version of the conservation of energy. In 1808, he launched an attack on John Smeaton and William Hyde Wollastons work championing the theory, in 1808 he also published a review of Laplaces Traité de Mécanique Celeste. Johns brothers were architect James Playfair, solicitor Robert Playfair and engineer William Playfair and his nephew, William Henry Playfair was an eminent architect in Scotland. Although an eminent man, Playfair was buried in a grave in Old Calton Burial Ground. His, and his brother, Jamess graves were marked by a plaque unveiled in 2011 following a local campaign, the monument to his memory by William Henry Playfair, on Calton Hill, is visible from the spot. In later life he admired and proposed to the wealthy widow Jane Apreece and she turned him down and married the younger and more famous Sir Humphry Davy. Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellow of the Royal Society of London,1807 Craters on Mars, the mineral playfairite was named in his honour. A four-volume collected edition of Playfairs works, with a memoir by James G. Playfair and his lives of Matthew Stewart, Hutton, and Robison, many of his reviews, and above all his Dissertation are of the utmost value
36.
James Clerk Maxwell
–
James Clerk Maxwell FRS FRSE was a Scottish scientist in the field of mathematical physics. Maxwells equations for electromagnetism have been called the great unification in physics after the first one realised by Isaac Newton. With the publication of A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field in 1865, Maxwell proposed that light is an undulation in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. The unification of light and electrical phenomena led to the prediction of the existence of radio waves, Maxwell helped develop the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution, a statistical means of describing aspects of the kinetic theory of gases. He is also known for presenting the first durable colour photograph in 1861 and his discoveries helped usher in the era of modern physics, laying the foundation for such fields as special relativity and quantum mechanics. Many physicists regard Maxwell as the 19th-century scientist having the greatest influence on 20th-century physics and his contributions to the science are considered by many to be of the same magnitude as those of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. In the millennium poll—a survey of the 100 most prominent physicists—Maxwell was voted the third greatest physicist of all time, behind only Newton and Einstein. On the centenary of Maxwells birthday, Einstein described Maxwells work as the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton. James Clerk Maxwell was born on 13 June 1831 at 14 India Street, Edinburgh, to John Clerk Maxwell of Middlebie, an advocate and his father was a man of comfortable means of the Clerk family of Penicuik, holders of the baronetcy of Clerk of Penicuik. His fathers brother was the 6th Baronet, James was the first cousin of the artist Jemima Blackburn and cousin of the civil engineer William Dyce Cay. They were close friends and Cay acted as his best man when Maxwell married, Maxwells parents met and married when they were well into their thirties, his mother was nearly 40 when he was born. They had had one child, a daughter named Elizabeth. When Maxwell was young his family moved to Glenlair House, which his parents had built on the 1,500 acres Middlebie estate, all indications suggest that Maxwell had maintained an unquenchable curiosity from an early age. By the age of three, everything moved, shone, or made a noise drew the question, whats the go o that. And show me how it doos is never out of his mouth and he also investigates the hidden course of streams and bell-wires, the way the water gets from the pond through the wall. Recognising the potential of the boy, Maxwells mother Frances took responsibility for Jamess early education. At eight he could recite long passages of Milton and the whole of the 119th psalm, indeed, his knowledge of scripture was already very detailed, he could give chapter and verse for almost any quotation from the psalms. His mother was ill with abdominal cancer and, after an unsuccessful operation
37.
Rubia
–
Rubia is a genus of flowering plants in the Rubiaceae family. It contains around 80 species of perennial scrambling or climbing herbs and subshrubs native to the Old World, the genus and its best-known species are commonly known as madder, e. g. Rubia tinctorum, Rubia peregrina, and Rubia cordifolia. Rubia was an important source of a red pigment in many regions of Asia, Europe. The genus name Rubia derives from the Latin ruber meaning red, the plants roots contain an anthracene compound called alizarin that gives its red colour to a textile dye known as Rose madder. It was also used as a colourant, especially for paint, the synthesis of alizarin greatly reduced demand for the natural compound. Cloth dyed with it has found on Egyptian mummies. It was the used for dyeing the cloaks of the Libyan women in the days of Herodotus. It is the erythrodanon of Pedanius Dioscorides, who wrote of its cultivation in Caria, and of Hippocrates, and the Rubia of Pliny. R. tinctorum was extensively cultivated in south Europe, France, where it is called garance, and the Netherlands, large quantities were imported into England from Smyrna, Trieste, Livorno, etc. The cultivation, however, decreased after alizarin was made artificially, Madder was employed medicinally in ancient civilizations and in the middle ages. Its most remarkable physiological effect was found to be that of colouring red the bones of animals fed upon it, as also the claws and this appears to be due to the chemical affinity of calcium phosphate for the colouring matter. This property was used to enable physiologists to ascertain the manner in which bones develop, Rubia in the World Checklist of Rubiaceae
38.
Holyrood Park
–
Holyrood Park is a royal park in central Edinburgh, Scotland about a mile to the east of Edinburgh Castle. It has an array of hills, lochs, glens, ridges, basalt cliffs, the park is associated with the royal palace of Holyroodhouse and was formerly a 12th-century royal hunting estate. The park was created in 1541 when James V had the ground circulit about Arthurs Sett, Salisborie, Holyrood Park is now publicly accessible. Arthurs Seat, the highest point in Edinburgh, is at the centre of the park, there are three lochs, St Margarets Loch, Dunsapie Loch, and Duddingston Loch. The ruined St Anthonys Chapel stands above St Margarets Loch, Queens Drive is the main route through the Park, and is partly closed on Sundays to motor vehicles. St Margarets Well and St Anthonys Well are both natural springs within the park, Holyrood Park is located to the south-east of the Old Town, at the edge of the city centre. Abbeyhill is to the north, and Duddingston village to the east, the University of Edinburghs Pollock Halls of Residence are to the south-west, and Dumbiedykes is to the west. Arthurs Seat is the peak of the group of hills which form most of Holyrood Park. The hill rises above the city to a height of 251 metres, provides excellent views, is easy to climb. The loch is fed water from Alnwickhill in the south of the city. Salisbury Crags are a series of 46-metre cliffs at the top of a spur of Arthurs Seat which rise on the west of Holyrood Park. Below the foot of the cliffs is a large and steep talus slope falling to the floor of Holyrood Park with a known as the Radical Road running in the space between the two. This track was given its name after it was paved in the aftermath of the Radical War of 1820, using the labour of unemployed weavers from the west of Scotland at the suggestion of Walter Scott. On the basis of it simply being the name, Hugo Arnot derived the name from the first Earl of Salisbury who accompanied Edward III of England on one of his invasions of Scotland. Grants view of this is that it was an idle story, the cliffs are formed from steep dolerite and columnar basalt and have a long history of rock climbing on their faces starting from the earliest days of the sport. Harold Raeburn was brought up nearby, and became the leading climber of the Scottish Mountaineering Club not long after he joined it in 1896, by 1900 a number of traditional climbing and sport climbing routes had been recorded by Raeburn and W. Inglis Clark. In recent years the park attempted to regulate access to the cliffs due to hazards to park visitors from loose. Climbers are now restricted to an area of the South Quarry
39.
James Crichton-Browne
–
Sir James Crichton-Browne MD FRS FRSE was a leading British psychiatrist, neurologist and medical psychologist. He is known for studies on the relationship of mental illness to brain injury, Crichton-Brownes father was the asylum reformer Dr William A. F. Browne, a prominent member of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. Crichton-Browne edited the highly influential West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports and he based himself at the West Riding Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield from 1866 to 1875, and there he taught psychiatry to students from the nearby Leeds School of Medicine. Crichton-Browne served as Lord Chancellors Visitor from 1875 till 1922, in 2015, UNESCO listed Crichton-Brownes clinical papers and photographs as items of international cultural importance. Crichton-Browne was born in Edinburgh at the home of his mother. She was the daughter of Dr Andrew Balfour and belonged to one of Scotlands foremost scientific families, the Balfour home had been constructed in 1770 for the unmarried geologist James Hutton. Crichton-Browne spent much of his childhood at The Crichton Royal in Dumfries where his father was the superintendent from 1838 to 1857. William A. F. W. A. F. Browne also hoarded a huge collection of patient art, in his childhood, Crichton-Browne lost an older brother, William in 1846. He went to school at Dumfries Academy and then, in line with his mothers episcopalian outlook, shortly before his death, Crichton-Browne wrote a valuable account of his Dumfries childhood, including the visit of the American asylum reformer Dorothea Lynde Dix. Crichton-Browne studied Medicine at Edinburgh University, qualifying as an MD in 1862 with a thesis on hallucinations, among his teachers was his fathers friend Thomas Laycock whose magnum opus Mind and Brain is an extended speculative essay on neurology and psychological life. Crichton-Browne also drew on the writings of the physicians Sir Andrew Halliday, like his father, Crichton-Browne was elected one of the undergraduate Presidents of the Royal Medical Society and, in this capacity, he argued for the place of psychology in the medical curriculum. This was also the year in which his father served as the President of the Medico-Psychological Association, ferriers neurology, Crichton-Browne spent ten years at the West Riding Asylum. He believed that the asylum should be an educational as well as an institution and set about a major research programme. He supervised hundreds of post-mortem examinations of the brain and took a special interest in the features of neurosyphilis. Ferriers work at Wakefield transformed the asylum into a centre for neuropsychiatry. Darwins correspondence, At the instigation of Henry Maudsley, Crichton-Browne corresponded with Charles Darwin from May 1869 until December 1875. The bulk of the correspondence occurred during the preparation of Crichton-Brownes famous West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports and of Darwins The Expression of the Emotions in Man, on 8 June 1869, Darwin sent Crichton-Browne his copy of Duchennes Mechanism of Human Facial Expression, asking for his comments. The complete correspondence between Crichton-Browne and Charles Darwin forms a remarkable contribution to the beginnings of behavioural science, Crichton-Browne described it as, philosophically unsound, scientifically inaccurate and practically useless
40.
Scottish Enlightenment
–
The Scottish Enlightenment was the period in 18th and early 19th century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. By the eighteenth century, Scotland had a network of schools in the Lowlands. Among the fields that rapidly advanced were philosophy, political economy, engineering, architecture, medicine, geology, archaeology, law, agriculture, chemistry, the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a natural development of this earlier engagement and advancement of knowledge. Union with England in 1707 meant the end of the Scottish Parliament, the parliamentarians, politicians, aristocrats, and placemen moved to London. Scottish law, however, was separate from English law, so the civil law courts, lawyers. The headquarters and leadership of the Church of Scotland also remained, as did the universities, at the union of 1707, England had about five times the population of Scotland and about 36 times as much wealth. Scotland experienced the beginnings of economic expansion that allowed it to close this gap, contacts with England led to a conscious attempt to improve agriculture among the gentry and nobility. Although some estate holders improved the quality of life of their workers, enclosures led to unemployment. The major change in trade was the rapid expansion of the Americas as a market. Glasgow particularly benefited from this new trade, initially supplying the colonies with manufactured goods, it emerged as the focus of the tobacco trade, the merchants dealing in this lucrative business became the wealthy tobacco lords, who dominated the city for most of the eighteenth century. Banking also developed in this period, the Bank of Scotland, founded in 1695 was suspected of Jacobite sympathies, and so a rival Royal Bank of Scotland was founded in 1727. Local banks began to be established in burghs like Glasgow and Ayr and these made capital available for business, and the improvement of roads and trade. By the late 17th century there was a complete network of parish schools in the Lowlands. By the 17th century, Scotland had five universities, compared with Englands two, all saw the establishment or re-establishment of chairs of mathematics. Observatories were built at St. Andrews and at Kings and Marischal colleges in Aberdeen, Robert Sibbald was appointed as the first Professor of Medicine at Edinburgh, and he co-founded the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1681. These developments helped the universities to major centres of medical education. By the 18th century, access to Scottish universities was probably more open than in contemporary England, attendance was less expensive and the student body more socially representative. In the eighteenth century Scotland reaped the benefits of this system
41.
David Hume
–
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of radical philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. Humes empiricist approach to philosophy places him with John Locke, Francis Bacon, beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume strove to create a total naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Humes compatibilist theory of free will takes causal determinism as fully compatible with human freedom, Kant himself credited Hume as the spur to his philosophical thought who had awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers. Arthur Schopenhauer once declared there is more to be learned from each page of David Hume than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart. Hume is thus regarded as a pivotal figure in the history of philosophical thought. David Hume was the second of two born to Joseph Home of Ninewells, an advocate, and his wife The Hon. Katherine. He was born on 26 April 1711 in a tenement on the side of the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh. Humes father died when Hume was a child, just after his birthday, and he was raised by his mother. He changed the spelling of his name in 1734, because of the fact that his surname Home, throughout his life Hume, who never married, spent time occasionally at his family home at Ninewells in Berwickshire, which had belonged to his family since the sixteenth century. His finances as a man were very slender. His family was not rich and, as a younger son and he was therefore forced to make a living somehow. Hume attended the University of Edinburgh at the early age of twelve at a time when fourteen was normal. He had little respect for the professors of his time, telling a friend in 1735 that there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books. Aged around 18, he made a discovery that opened up to him a new Scene of Thought. He did not recount what this scene was, and commentators have offered a variety of speculations, due to this inspiration, Hume set out to spend a minimum of ten years reading and writing. He soon came to the verge of a breakdown, suffering from what a doctor diagnosed as the Disease of the Learned. Hume wrote that it started with a coldness, which he attributed to a Laziness of Temper, later, some scurvy spots broke out on his fingers. This was what persuaded Humes physician to make his diagnosis, Hume wrote that he went under a Course of Bitters and Anti-Hysteric Pills, taken along with a pint of claret every day
42.
Adam Smith
–
Adam Smith FRSA was a Scottish economist, philosopher, and author. He was a philosopher, a pioneer of political economy. He is best known for two works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and An Inquiry into the Nature. The latter, usually abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics. Smith studied social philosophy at the University of Glasgow and at Balliol College, Oxford, after graduating, he delivered a successful series of public lectures at Edinburgh, leading him to collaborate with David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith obtained a professorship at Glasgow teaching moral philosophy, and during this time he wrote, in his later life, he took a tutoring position that allowed him to travel throughout Europe, where he met other intellectual leaders of his day. Smith laid the foundations of free market economic theory. The Wealth of Nations was a precursor to the academic discipline of economics. In this and other works, he developed the concept of division of labour, Smith was controversial in his own day and his general approach and writing style were often satirised by Tory writers in the moralising tradition of William Hogarth and Jonathan Swift. In 2005, The Wealth of Nations was named among the 100 Best Scottish Books of all time, the minor planet 12838 Adamsmith was named in his memory. Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, in the County of Fife and his father, also Adam Smith, was a Scottish Writer to the Signet, advocate, and prosecutor and also served as comptroller of the Customs in Kirkcaldy. In 1720 he married Margaret Douglas, daughter of the landed Robert Douglas of Strathendry and his father died two months after he was born, leaving his mother a widow. The date of Smiths baptism into the Church of Scotland at Kirkcaldy was 5 June 1723, and this has often been treated as if it were also his date of birth, Smith was close to his mother, who probably encouraged him to pursue his scholarly ambitions. He attended the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy—characterised by Rae as one of the best secondary schools of Scotland at that period—from 1729 to 1737, he learned Latin, mathematics, history, Smith entered the University of Glasgow when he was fourteen and studied moral philosophy under Francis Hutcheson. Here, Smith developed his passion for liberty, reason, in 1740 Smith was the graduate scholar presented to undertake postgraduate studies at Balliol College, Oxford, under the Snell Exhibition. Adam Smith considered the teaching at Glasgow to be far superior to that at Oxford, according to William Robert Scott, The Oxford of time gave little if any help towards what was to be his lifework. Nevertheless, Smith took the opportunity while at Oxford to teach several subjects by reading many books from the shelves of the large Bodleian Library. When Smith was not studying on his own, his time at Oxford was not a happy one, near the end of his time there, Smith began suffering from shaking fits, probably the symptoms of a nervous breakdown
43.
Royal Society of Edinburgh
–
The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotlands national academy of science and letters. It is a charity, operating on a wholly independent and non-party-political basis. As of 2014 it has more than 1,500 Fellows, the Society covers a broader selection of fields than the Royal Society of London including literature and history. Fellowship includes people from a range of disciplines – science & technology, arts, humanities, medicine, social science, business. The Medals were instituted in 2000 by Queen Elizabeth II, whose permission is required to make a presentation, past winners include, The Lord Kelvin Medal is the Senior Prize for Physical, Engineering and Informatics Sciences. It is awarded annually to a person who has achieved distinction nationally and internationally, winners receive a silver medal and are required to deliver a public lecture in Scotland. The award is named after William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, who was a mathematical physicist and engineer. Senior Prize-winners are required to have a Scottish connection but can be based anywhere in the world, the Keith medal has been historically awarded every four years for a scientific paper published in the societys scientific journals, preference being given to a paper containing a discovery. It is awarded alternately for papers on Mathematics or Earth and Environmental Sciences, the medal was founded in 1827 as a result of a bequest by Alexander Keith of Dunottar, the first Treasurer of the Society. The prize was founded in 1855 by Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane, the cumbersome name was changed the following year to the Edinburgh Philosophical Society. Under the leadership of Prof. Thus, for the first four decades of the 19th century, by the 1850s, the society once again unified its membership under one journal. During the 19th century the society produced many scientists whose ideas laid the foundation of the modern sciences, from the 20th century onward, the society functioned not only as a focal point for Scotlands eminent scientists, but also the arts and humanities. It still exists today and continues to promote research in Scotland. In February 2014, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was announced as the societys first female president, taking up her position in October
44.
Joseph Black
–
Joseph Black FRSE FRCPE FPSG was a Scottish physician and chemist, known for his discoveries of magnesium, latent heat, specific heat, and carbon dioxide. The chemistry buildings at both the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow are named after Black, Black was born in Bordeaux, France, where his father, who was from Belfast, Ireland, was engaged in the wine trade. His mother was from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and her family was also in the wine business, Joseph had twelve brothers and sisters. During his studies he wrote a thesis on the treatment of kidney stones with the salt magnesium carbonate. Like most eighteenth-century experimentalists, Blacks conceptualisation of chemistry was based on five principles of matter, Water, Salt, Earth, Fire and he added the principle of Air when his experiments definitely confirmed the presence of carbon dioxide. Blacks research programme was guided by questions relating to how the foregoing principles combined with other in various different forms. He used the term affinity to describe the force that held such combinations together, throughout his career he used a variety of diagrams and formulas to teach his Edinburgh students how to manipulate affinity through different kinds of experimentation. In about 1750, while still a student, Black developed the analytical balance based on a beam balanced on a wedge-shaped fulcrum. Each arm carried a pan on which the sample or standard weights was placed and it far exceeded the accuracy of any other balance of the time and became an important scientific instrument in most chemistry laboratories. In 1757, Black was appointed Regius Professor of the Practice of Medicine at the University of Glasgow. Additionally, Black observed that the application of heat to boiling water does not result in a rise in temperature of a water/steam mixture, from these observations, he concluded that the heat applied must have combined with the ice particles and boiling water and become latent. The theory of latent heat marks the beginning of thermodynamics, Blacks theory of latent heat was one of his more-important scientific contributions, and one on which his scientific fame chiefly rests. He also showed that different substances have different specific heats, the theory ultimately proved important not only in the development of abstract science but in the development of the steam engine. The latent heat of water is large compared with other liquids. Black and Watt became friends after meeting around 1757 while both were at Glasgow, Black provided significant financing and other support for Watts early research in steam power. Black also explored the properties of a gas produced in various reactions and he found that limestone could be heated or treated with acids to yield a gas he called fixed air. He observed that the air was denser than air and did not support either flame or animal life. Black also found that when bubbled through a solution of lime
45.
Forth and Clyde Canal
–
It is 35 miles long and it runs from the River Carron at Grangemouth to the River Clyde at Bowling, and had an important basin at Port Dundas in Glasgow. Successful in its day, it suffered as the vessels were built larger. The railway age further impaired the success of the canal, the final decision to close the canal in the mid 1960s was made due to maintenance costs of bridges crossing the canal exceeding the revenues it brought in. However, subsidies to the network were also a cause for its decline. The lack of political and financial foresight also removed a historical recreational waterway, unlike the majority of major canals the route through Grangemouth was drained and back filled to create a new carriageway for port traffic. The M8 motorway in the approaches to Glasgow took over some of the alignment of the canal. The eastern end of the canal is connected to the River Forth by a stretch of the River Carron near Grangemouth, the canal continues past Twechar, through Kirkintilloch and Bishopbriggs to the Maryhill area north of Glasgow city centre. A branch to Port Dundas was built to secure the agreement, the western end of the canal connects to the River Clyde at Bowling. In 1840, a 0.5 mile canal, the Forth and Cart Canal was built to link the Forth and Clyde canal, at Whitecrook, to the River Clyde, robert Whitworth, an engineer possessing a well earned reputation. The work was completed on the 28 July 1790 and this magnificent canal commences in the River Forth, in Grangemouth Harbour, and near to where the Carron empties itself into that river. The summit level is sixteen miles in length, and in the remainder of its course, there is a fall to low water, in the Clyde, at Bowlings Bay, of 156 feet, by nineteen locks. The branch to the Monkland Canal at Glasgow is two miles and three quarters, and there is cut into the Carron River, at Carron Shore. It is supplied water from reservoirs, one of which, at Kilmananmuir, is seventy acres, and 22 feet deep at the sluice. By 1812 they carried 44,000 passengers, taking receipts of more than £3450, from 1828 there was a steamboat service, operated by Thomas Grahames boat Cupid. The canal was designed by John Smeaton, construction started in 1768 and after delays due to funding problems was completed in 1790. The Union Canal was then constructed to link the eastern end of the canal to Edinburgh. In 1842 an Act of Parliament was obtained authorising the Caledonian Railway to take over the Forth and Clyde Canal along with the Forth and Cart Canal, in the meantime the Canal company itself had built a railway branch line to Grangemouth Dock, which it owned. The canal was nationalised in 1948, along with the railway companies, in 1962, the British Transport Commission was wound up, and control passed to the British Waterways Board, subsequently Scottish Canals took control
