RAMSAY, Sir ANDREW CROMBIE ( 1814-91) . A Scotch geologist, born in Glasgow. His educa tion at the grammar school in that city was interrupted in 1827 by the death of his father, a manufacturing chemist, who had made several important discoveries, but had patented none of them. The family was left almoA without pro vision, and Andrew entered a counting house, and in 1S37 attempted business as a dealer in calico and linen. By 1S40 this project had proved a failure, but in the following year, at 9d. a day, he was appointed assistant to the Geological Survey, with which he was connected until 1881, becoming local director for Great Britain in 1845, senior director for England and Wales in 1862, and director-general in 1871. Upon retiring from active service in 1881 he was knighted. In 1847 he had been appointed to the chair of geology in University College, Lon don, and in 1S51 received a like position in the Royal School of Mines. He was president of the Geological Society in 1862-64; became• a fellow of the Royal Society in 1862; received the Neill Prize from the Edinburgh Royal Society in 1866, the Wollaston medal of the Geological Society in 1870, and in 1SSO a Royal Society medal. He was a good lecturer, something of an
improvisator, and an ardent lover of English poetry. His rather typical Celtic nature made him over hasty in judgment at times. and as a geologist he was a stratigrapher at the expense of paleontology or petrography. His most valu able work on glacial formations, Old Glaciers of North, Wales and Switzerland (1800), was followed by a series of popular lectures, Physical Geology and Geography of Great Britain (1804; 6th ed. 1S94) ; and Rudiments of -Mineralogy (3d ed. 1885). The theory with which he was most closely identified, but which has not received gen eral assent, is that many lake basins have been formed as the result of glacial excavations. Consult Geikie, Memoir (London, 1895).