Science on Four Wheels: The European Travels of Roderick Murchison

Professor Collie has studied and written about Sir Roderick Murchison in several monographs. This study deals with Murchison and the wider and more general activity of scientific travels in the mid 19th C. This work introduces the reader to the practices of intellectual and cultural exchange in Continental Europe. These exchanges, despite the political pressures that often mitigated against the free flow of ideas, were increased as steam power and telegraphs made there way from West to East and intrepid savants, such as the eminent geologist Muchison. Each chapter is devoted to a specific journey as adventure, exploration, scientific enquiry, peer group contacts and personal, sometimes psychologically significant experience. Taken together they show the one time President of the Geological Society of London converting himself into the President of the Royal Geographical Society especially due to his travels in Eurasian Russia.