1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Scrope, George Julius Poulett

SCROPE, GEORGE JULIUS POULETT (1797–1876), English geologist and political economist, was born on the 10th of March 1797, the second son of J. Poulett Thompson of Waverley Abbey, Surrey. He was educated at Harrow, and for a short time at Pembroke College, Oxford, but in 1816 he entered St John's College, Cambridge, graduated B.A. in 1821, and through the influence of E. D. Clarke and Sedgwick became interested in mineralogy and geology. During the winter of 1816–1817 he was at Naples, and was so keenly interested in Vesuvius that he renewed his studies of the volcano in 1818; and in the following year visited Etna and the Lipari Islands. In 1821 he married the daughter and heiress of William Scrope of Castle Combe, Wiltshire, and assumed her name; and he entered parliament in 1833 as M.P. for Stroud, retaining his seat until 1868. Meanwhile he began to study the volcanic regions of Central France in 1821, and visited the Eifel district in 1823. In 1825 he published Considerations on Volcanos, leading to the establishment of a new theory of the Earth, and in the following year was elected F.R.S. This earlier work was subsequently amplified and issued under the title of Volcanos (1862): an authoritative text-book of which a second edition was published ten years later. In 1827 he issued his classic Memoir on the Geology of Central France, including the Volcanic formations of Auvergne, the Veloy and the Vivarais, a quarto volume illustrated by maps and plates. The substance of this was reproduced in a revised and somewhat more popular form in The Geology and extinct Volcanos of Central France (1858). Scrope was awarded the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society in 1867. Among his other works was the History of the Manor and Ancient Barony of Castle Combe (printed for private circulation, 1852). He died at Fairlawn near Cobham in Surrey on the 19th of January 1876.

Biography (with portrait) in Geol. Mag. for May 1870.