James Croll – bicentenary and biography, from janitor to genius

Edwards, Kevin J.

doi:10.1017/s1755691021000335

Cited by 1 publication

(3 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…The Autobiographical Sketch of James Croll: with Memoir of his Life and Work is a somewhat adulatory account ( cf . Edwards, 2021a; Edwards and Robinson, 2021), but the factual content and transcriptions of Croll's voluminous correspondence contained within it are reliable (Edwards, 2021b, c).…”

Section: The Passage Of a Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Certificate of candidature (upper portion of figure) for James Croll, courtesy of the Royal Society of London (Collections EC/1876/08). Further details on the nominators are provided in Edwards (2021a). …”

Section: The Passage Of a Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Alexander, 1900; Imbrie and Imbrie, 1979; Tasch, 1986; Farrow, 2001; Gribbin and Gribbin, 2001; Fleming, 2006; Hilgen, 2010; Finnegan, 2012; Sugden, 2014; Pearce, 2018; Dry, 2019). In the year following the bicentenary of his birth, and drawing upon archival records and recently published observations (Edwards 2021a), this paper explores selected aspects of Croll's biography, his scientific connections and controversies, and that area of his life relevant to Quaternary science. While presenting material that has often been ignored hitherto, the paper does not set out to be encyclopaedic, and beyond contextualisation no attempt is made to explain at length the science with which Croll was engaged.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘The most remarkable man’: James Croll, Quaternary scientist

Edwards

2022

J Quaternary Science

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The year 2021 marked the bicentenary of the birth of James Croll (1821–1890), the self‐educated son of a crofter‐stonemason, whose life was characterised by a dizzying range of occupations and homes, poor health and financial concerns, and yet he became a pioneer of orbital dynamics and ice age climate change with an impressive record of publication. Drawing upon archival information and recently published observations, this paper explores selected aspects of Croll's biography, his scientific connections and controversies, and that area of his life relevant to Quaternary science. He was a 19th century polymath whose multifaceted contributions have been a catalyst for subsequent systems‐based climate science on the grand scale, including the foundations for the seminal work of Milutin Milankovitch on the rhythms of Quaternary environmental change.

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