A short history of the origins of the Society
On 13th December 1859 nine men met at 7 London Road, Liverpool, the home of George Highfield Morton, a painter and decorator, and agreed to the formation of The Liverpool Geological Society. The objects of the Society were formulated “to investigate the structure of the Earth, the character of its past inhabitants, and the changes now in progress upon its surface”. A Past President and Member, Professor Herdman and his wife endowed a Chair of Geology in The University of Liverpool in 1916 in memory of their son Lieutenant George Herdman who was killed in the First World War. With the opening of a Department of Geology in 1929, again due to Professor Herdman’s generosity in memory of his wife, Jane, many meetings were held in that building at the invitation of the first Professor PGH Boswell. Meetings continued to be held in The University of Liverpool’s Jane Herdman Laboratories of Geology. For a while, meetings were moved to Liverpool John Moores University’s Byrom Street Campus. In October 2021, meetings were run in The Athenaeum, Church Alley, Liverpool but at the start of 2022 meetings returned to the University of Liverpool where they are now held in its Central Teaching Hub. Today, after more than 160 years, the Society still flourishes, and is still composed overwhelmingly of ordinary people who have an interest in geology in all its many aspects – from volcanoes to floods, deserts and seas, mountains and glaciers, minerals and rocks, and fossils. Ever since the Society’s first open meeting, on 10th January 1860, The Liverpool Geological Society has invited the knowledgeable and famous to come and tell all those interested in the wonders of the world and its even more amazing history, beginning some 4,600,000,000 years ago.
The first President of LGS
Henry Duckworth F.G.S. was elected as the first President in 1859 and was re-elected President in 1864. Only two or three weeks before the meeting at which the Society was constituted, Darwin had published his ‘On the Origin of Species.” In his Presidential address during the second session of the Society (Feb. 1861) Mr. Duckworth “reviewed the geological arguments in Mr. Darwin’s work and Professor Phillips’ ‘Origin and Succession of Life upon the Earth’ and earnestly recommended the members of the Society “to study both sides of the question fully before forming any decided opinions upon the subject.”
Henry Duckworth F.G.S.
The Liverpool Geological Society Medal
An occasional award of a medal may be made to a person who is considered to have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of geology and/or of related science(s), or of their application, and/or to the activities of the Society in furtherance of its Objects.
