Darwin in the field: Collecting, Observation and Experiment
*11th – 12th July 2009*
The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge
Saturday 11th July 2009
09.30 Registration & Coffee
10.35 Welcome to the Sedgwick Museum
Dr David Norman, Director of the Sedgwick Museum
10.45 In Darwin’s pocket
Dr John van Wyhe & Dr Gordon Chancellor, University of Cambridge &
University of Essex
11.20 Darwin’s Welsh Connections; the making of the naturalist and geologist
Rev. Michael Roberts, Chirk, North Wales
11.55 Darwin and the Geological Survey – an unlikely collaboration?
Dr Michael Howe, British Geological Survey, Keyworth
12:30 Live performance by ‘Pif Paf’ of “Under the Floorboards: a time travelling
adventure with the Rev. Adam Sedgwick…”
13:15 Buffet Lunch
14:00 Darwin’s Igneous Geology
Prof. Paul Pearson, University of Cardiff
14:35 Darwin in Glen Roy: The how and why of a “Gigantic Blunder”
Prof. Martin Rudwick, University of Cambridge
15:10 Classifying in the field: Darwin, Hooker and the permanence of species
Dr Jim Endersby, University of Sussex
15:45 From one finding of a few (Mastodon?) bones to a general theory of species
extinctions: Darwin at Port St. Julian in February 1835
Prof. Jon Hodge, University of Leeds
16:30 Tea / Coffee
17:30 – 19:00 Viewing of the new permanent exhibition ‘Darwin the Geologist’ in the
Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences
Sunday 12th July
09:30 An appreciation of Charles Darwin’s fossil collection from the Falkland Islands
Dr Phil Stone, British Geological Survey, Edinburgh
10:05 Darwin’s coral reef collection at the Natural History Museum London: his lost exhibit, Cocos-Keeling atoll transect and subsidence theory of reef development.
Prof. Brian Rosen & Jill Darrell (Natural History Museum, London)
10:40 Like a /Megatherium /smoking a cigar: Darwin’s Beagle fossils in the 19th-Century
Dr Gowan Dawson, University of Leicester
11:15 Coffee
11:45: “I have hardly the means“: Charles Darwin, Transoceanic Dispersal, and the Geography of Science
Michael D. Barton, Montana State University
12:20 Was Darwin’s theory of coral reef formation the product of a particular place?
Dr Alistair Sponsel, Smithsonian Institution
12:55 Plenary and questions
13:15 Close
In order to register for this conference by the 19th June 2009, please send payment and contact details to:
Dr L. Anderson, N297, Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Downing St., Cambridge, CB2 3EQ by 19th June 2009.
Conference cost: £60.00 per person
Method of payment: Cheque
Cheques payable to: The University of Cambridge
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Downing St., Cambridge, CB2 3EQ. (Email: [email protected])