Robert Mallet and the founding of seismology

References

• The fullest account, by Cox Robert Mallet, F. R. S., 1810–1881 Cox Ronald C. Dublin 1982 1 33 is in G. L. Herries Davies (‘Robert Mallet: Earth Scientist’, pp. 35–52 in the same volume) concisely surveys Mallet's geological contributions as a whole; and a bibliography of Mallet's publications in all areas is at pp. 133–9. See also ‘Memoir’, Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 68 (1882), 297–304; Dictionary of Scientific Biography; and Charles Davison, The Founders of Seismology (Cambridge, 1927), Chapter 5. We do not have a more recent book than Davison's of similar scope.
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• Adams , Frank Dawson . 1938 . The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences 400 – 401 . reprinted New York, 1954)
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• Mallet , Robert . 1851 . “ First Report on the Facts of Earthquake Phoenomena ” . In Report of the British Association for 1850 1 – 87 . London (pp. 3–8 (Greek), 83–7).
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• Adams . 1938 . The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences 404 – 409 . (He also cites a third book on the earthquake of 1570—Gregorio Zuccolo, Del Terremoto Tratto (Bologna, 1571)—that I have been unable to verify); R. Mallet (footnote 3), 12 (Maggio).
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• Adams . 1938 . The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences 11 – 12 . (p. 12), but misdated by a century.
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• Adams . 1938 . The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences 12 – 15 . (pp. 12 and 13). I have not found another historian who has read either Travagini or Fromondi.
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• Adams . 1938 . The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences 15 – 17 . (p. 15).
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• Michell , John . 1761 . Conjectures Concerning the Cause and Observations upon the Phenomena of Earthquakes; Particularly of That Great Earthquake of the First of November, 1755, Which Proved So Fatal to the City of Lisbon, and Whose Effects Were Felt as Far as Africa, and More or Less Throughout Europe . Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London , 51 : 566 – 634 . (read 28 February–27 March 1760). Robert Mallet (footnote 3), pp. 17–19; Michell's paper was of fundamental importance to Mallet.
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• Mallet . 1851 . “ First Report on the Facts of Earthquake Phoenomena ” . In Report of the British Association for 1850 19 – 24 . London C. Davison (footnote 1). Thomas Young, Lectures on Natural Philosophy, 2 vols (London, 1807), i, 717; L. J. Guy-Lussac, ‘Reflexions sur les Volcans’, Annals de Chimie et de Physique (1823), 415–29, 428–9; David Milne, ‘Notice of Earthquake-Shocks Felt in Great Britain, and Especially in Scotland, with Influence Suggested by These Notices as to the Causes of Such Shocks’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, 31 (1841), 92–122, 259–309; Alexander von Humboldt, Cosmos, translated by E. C. Otte (London, 1849), i, 199–200. Deodat de Dolomieu, Memoire sur les Tremblemens de Terre de la Calabre pendant l'Annee 1783 (Rome, 1784); Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799–1804, translated by Helen Maria Williams, 7 vols (London, 1814–29); Mrs Maria Graham, ‘An Account of Some Effects of the Late Earthquake in Chili’, Transactions of the Geological Society of London, NS 1 (1824), 413–5; Charles Darwin, Journal of Researches into Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle under the Command of Capt. Fitzroy R.N. from 1832–1836 (London, 1839; revised 1845); Robert Bakewell, Introduction to Geology (London, 1813; and later editions); Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology 3 vols (London, 1830–33; and later editions).
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• Mallet , Robert . 1848 . On the Dynamics of Earthquakes; Being an Attempt to Reduce Their Observed Phenomena to the Known Laws of Wave Motion in Solids and Fluids . Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy , 21 : 51 – 105 . read 9 February 1846. Page numbers cited in text refer to the publication being discussed. Mallet (p. 52) cites Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, second edition, i (1832), p. 482; he should have said pp. 482–3. The same passage also appears in editions one (1830) and three through six (1834–40). C. Darwin (footnote 9), Chapter 14 (4–6 March 1835). See also Darwin to Mallet, 26 August 1846 in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, edited by Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith, iii (Cambridge, 1987), 335–6.
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• See also Mallet Robert On the Objects, Construction, and Use of Certain New Instruments for Self-Registration of the Passage of Earthquake Shocks Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy 1848 21 107 113 read 22 June 1846. Though commissioned by the Academy to design a self-registering seismograph, Mallet's attempt (described here) was unsatisfactory.
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• Full reference in Mallet Robert First Report on the Facts of Earthquake Phoenomena Report of the British Association for 1850 London 1851 1 87 See also Robert Mallet (then president of the Geological Society of Dublin), ‘On the Facts of Earthquake Phoenomena’, Report of the British Association for 1847 (London, 1848), p. 30 (dated Oxford, 25 June 1847); and ‘To the Assistant-General Secretary’, Report of the British Association for 1848 (London, 1849), p. 98 (dated Dublin, 27 July 1848). In 1847 the Association had created a Committee for the Construction of a Self-Registering Seismometer, with Mallet as chairman, granting it £50.
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• von Hoff , Karl Ernst Adolf . Geschichte der durch Uberlieferung Nachgewiesenen Naturlichen Veranderungen der Erdoberflache , IV and V (separately titled Chronik der Erdbeben und Vulcan-Ausbruche) (Gotha, 1840, 1841). Volume iv, 123–470, covers the years from 1606 b.c. through a.d. 1759; v, 1–406, from 1760 through 1832. Perrey's annual catalogues (covering the years 1843–71) were often more than one hundred pages long; never collected, they were primarily published in the Memoires of the Dijon Academy of Sciences and in the Bulletin of the Royal Academy of Belgium. For a fuller discussion of Perrey, see C. Davison (footnote 1), Chapter 4. Shorter earthquake catalogues had been published by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers.
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• Mallet , Robert . 1852 . “ Second Report on the Facts of Earthquake Phoenomena ” . In Report of the British Association for 1851 272 – 320 . London
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• See also Mallet Robert Provisional Report on Earthquake Wave-Transits; and on Seismometrical Instruments Report of the British Association for 1853 London 1854 86 87 another letter (undated) to the Assistant-General Secretary and the two papers cited later in this note. His ‘Provisional Report’ states that the £50 granted to Mallet by the Association in 1850 for his experiments at Killiney Bay and Dalkey had been ‘wholly expended, in addition to a sum a good deal exceeding its amount’. He had made some progress in the construction of a self-registering seismometer and expected to have it ready for exhibit next year (it was not). His ‘great Earthquake Catalogue, due almost wholly to the devotion and labour’ of his eldest son, Dr John William Mallet, had been ‘entirely completed and discussed, and the results reduced to curves’. The first portion had already been published (in 1852) and he now expected all the rest to appear in the 1853 Report (it did not). At the September 1852 meeting of the Association, Mallet had received yet another grant of £50, for further experiments upon earthquake wave transit, this time at Holyhead harbour, Anglesea. As Mallet promised in this communication, he visited the site in the spring of 1853, but his experimenting was then delayed for three years and proceeded only slowly thereafter. His results belatedly appeared as Robert Mallet, ‘Account of Experiments Made at Holyhead (North Wales) to Ascertain the Transit-Velocity of Waves, Analogous to Earthquake Waves, Through the Local Rock Formations’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 151 (1861), 655–79; read 20 June 1861. Also ‘Appendix to the Account of the Earthquake-Wave Experiments Made at Holyhead’, ibid., 152 (1862), 663–76; read 8 May 1862. He ascertained that ‘the rate of wave-propagation in highly stratified, contorted and foliated rock is intermediate between that for dense wet sand and for discontinuous and shattered granite’ (1861, p. 675, recalling his earlier determinations at Killiney Bay and Dalkey). The ‘Appendix’ reported a series of compression experiments made on Holyhead rocks at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich.
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• Mallet , Robert and Mallet , John William . 1853 . “ Third Report on the Facts of Earthquake Phoenomena ” . In Report of the British Association for 1852 1 – 176 . London for 1853, (1854) pp. 118–212; for 1854 (1855), pp. 1–326. Reprinted 1858 (footnote 20).
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• Wallis , John . 1665 . A Relation Concerning the Late Earthquake near Oxford . Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London , 1 : 166 – 171 . (see also pp. 179–81); ‘A Letter from Hans Sloane, M.D. and S.R.S. with Several Accounts of the Earthquake in Peru October the 20th 1687. And at Jamaica, February 19th 1687 and June the 7th 1692’, ibid., 18 (1694), 78–102 (for wave-like motions of the ground, see pp. 82, 92). The same volume also includes a Sicilian earthquake account (pp. 2–10).
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• See also Mallet Robert Fourth Report upon the Facts and Theory of Earthquake Phoenomena Report of the British Association for 1858 London 1859 9 10
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• Mallet , Robert . 1855 . Notice of the British Earthquake of November 9, 1852 . Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy , 22 : 397 – 410 . read 13 February 1854.
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• Mallet , Robert . 1859 . “ Fourth Report upon the Facts and Theory of Earthquake Phoenomena ” . In Report of the British Association for 1858 1 – 136 . London The third and fourth reports were then reprinted separately as Robert Mallet and John William Mallet, The Earthquake Catalogue of the British Association, with the Discussion, Curves, and Maps, Etc. (London, Taylor and Francis, 1858). Taylor and Francis also published the Association's regular annual reports.
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• Scrope , George Poulett . 1825 . Considerations on Volcanos London provided a list of active volcanoes (pp. 245–60), as did Von Hoff; neither included a world volcano map, though Scrope would do so in his second edition of 1862. For alternative views on earthquakes, see G. P. Scrope, Volcanos (being the second edition of his 1825 work; London, 1862), pp. 295–310.
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• The Mid-Atlantic Ridge (variously named) had only recently been discovered, through co-ordinated soundings, and was not known to be a rift; see Maury M.F. The Physical Geography of the Sea New York 1855 It was not systematically investigated until 1873, by the ‘Challenger’ expedition (Report, London, 1885).
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• His two most important predecessors were Alexander von Humboldt, who recognized the alignment of Mexican volcanoes along a common fissure, and Leopold von Buch, who extended the principle worldwide, particularly around the rim of the Pacific. Neither was concerned with earthquakes or plates. Von Buch's emphasis upon elevation, moreover, would have made his theories unacceptable to Mallet. But a number of contemporary geologists were associating mountain ranges with adjacent fissures. See Greene Mott T. Geology in the Nineteenth-Century Ithaca and London 1982 83 135
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• Mallet had previously written on observational methodology in the earthquake chapter of the Admiralty Manual of Scientific Enquiry London 1849 and later editions) on the recommendation of Charles Darwin, who wrote the geology chapter. There had already been two editions (1849, pp. 196–223; 1851, pp. 205–36) and there would be two more (1859, pp. 325–63; 1871, pp. 299–333). Not surprisingly, the third edition of 1859 includes his most important revisions.
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• The original photographs, preserved by the Royal Society, have recently been published, together with a dual-language reprint of Mallet's text, and a volume of Italian-perspective essays, Bologna Guidoboni Emanuela Ferrari Graziano 1987
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• Mallet , Robert . 1862 . The First Principles of Observational Seismology Vol. 2 , London See also Robert Mallet, ‘Report to the Royal Society of the Expedition into the Kingdom of Naples to Investigate the Circumstances of the Earthquake of the 16th December 1857’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 10 (1860), 486–94; read 24 May 1860. The latter is an outline (with minor differences) of the former.
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• For Mallet and landslips, see Alexander David “Extraordinary and Terrifying Metamorphosis”—on the Seismic Causes of Slope Instability History of Geomorphology, from Hutton to Hack Tinkler K.J. Boston, London, Sydney, and Wellington 1989 127 150 in (especially pp. 141–7).
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• Rogers , William Barton and Rogers , Henry Darwin . 1843 . On the Physical Structure of the Appalachian Chain, as Exemplifying the Laws Which Have Regulated the Elevation of Great Mountain Chains Generally . Reports of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists , : 474 – 531 . also Report of the British Association for 1842 (London, 1843), pp. 40–2. This theory, called to his attention by C. Darwin (footnote 10) was Mallet's bête noire; see also ‘First Report’, p. 24.
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• Mallet , Robert . 1873 . Volcanic Energy: An Attempt to Develop Its True Origin and Cosmical Relations . Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London , 163 : 147 – 227 . (with an ‘Addition’ the next year: Proceedings, 22, 328–9, read 20 June 1872). Archibald Geikie, Text-Book of Geology (London, 1882), pp. 286–7, suggests that Mallet's contraction theory was well received. The concept (in various forms) remained popular well into the twentieth-century. See also Luigi Palmieri in Robert Mallet, The Eruption of Vesuvius in 1872, with Notes, and an Introductory Sketch of the Present State of Knowledge of Terrestrial Volcanicity, the Cosmical Nature and Relations of Volcanoes and Earthquakes, (London, 1873); pp. 7–46 deal with seismology; pp. 46–78, with volcanology. Robert Mallet, ‘Note on the History of Certain Recent Views in Dynamical Geology’, American Journal of Science (NS 3), 5 (1875), 302–3, is related. Mallet's last seismological contribution otherwise was ‘Notice of Some of the Secondary Effects of the Earthquake of 10th January 1869 in Cachar’, Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, 28 (1872), 255–71, a letter by Thomas Oldham from Calcutta with remarks before and after by Mallet. Oldham (sometimes considered a founder of seismology himself) acknowledges his tutelage under Mallet, who then emphasizes Oldham's acceptance of the secondary origin of fissures, with a further, detailed explanation. In response to a question, Mallet endorsed two theories regarding the origins of earthquakes: (1) ‘deep subterranean volcanic action’ (as before); and (2) ‘the breaking up or the grinding over each other of rocky beds at a great depth, through the tangential pressures produced in the earth's crust by secular cooling’ (p. 270).
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• Hopkins , William . 1848 . “ Report on the Geological Theories of Elevation and Earthquakes ” . In Report of the British Association for 1847 33 – 92 . London (Mallet cited, p. 74). Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, seventh edition (London, 1847) (Mallet cited, pp. 452–4, 457, 464–5, 476, 534). John Milne, Earthquakes and Other Earth Movements (New York, 1886), p. 43 (see also p. vii); Archibald Geikie, TextBook of Geology (London, 1882), p. 247. Charles Davison, A Study of Recent Earthquakes (London and Newcastle upon Tyne, 1905), p. 7; 1927 (footnote 1), p. 70.
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• Abbot , H.L. 1878 . On the Velocity of Transmission of Earth Waves . American Journal of Science , 15 : 178 – 184 . Robert Mallet, ‘On the Seismic Results Obtained from the Hallet's Point Explosion’, Philosophical Magazine, 4 (1877), 298–302; Robert Mallet, ‘Rate of Earthquake-wave Transit’, Philosophical Magazine, 5 (1878), 358–62. See Clarence E. Dutton, Earthquakes in the Light of the New Seismology (New York and London, 1904), pp. 126–8; and C. Davison (footnote 1), pp. 158–60. Other details in this paragraph are from C. Davison, passim; J. Milne (footnote 31), pp. 275–6; C. E. Dutton (this footnote), 246–7 (quoting p. 246); and William H. Hobbs, Earthquakes, an Introduction to Seismic Geology (New York, 1907), pp. 46–7; C. Davison (footnote 1), 73–4 (quoting p. 74).
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• The only exceptions that I have seen, both of them brief, are Davies Herries Robert Mallet: Earth Scientist 45 45 and Robert Muir Wood, The Dark Side of the Earth (London, Boston, and Sydney, 1985), pp. 196–7.
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• Davison , C. 1927 . The Founders of Seismology 84 – 86 . Cambridge 126, 219; C. Lyell, Principles of Geology, tenth edition, 2 vols (London, 1867–8), II, 82n, 118–20, 137–40, 143, 152–3; and similarly in the eleventh (1872) and twelfth (1875) editions; A. Geikie (footnote 31), 269–70; and J. Milne (footnote 31) 97, 213–25, and passim.
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• Davison , Charles . 1900 . Methods of Studying Earthquakes . The Journal of Geology , 8 : 301 – 308 . 302; and (footnote 31), 7–44, 9, 23; W. H. Hobbs (footnote 32), 14, 15; and ‘The Evolution and the Outlook of Seismic Geology’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 48 (1909), 259–302; 261; Oscar C. S. Carter, ‘Earthquakes in the Light of the New Seismology’, Franklin Institute Journal, 167 (1909), 434–72, 434; C. Davison (footnote 1), 76–7, 78; Charles F. Richter, Elementary Seismology (San Francisco and London, 1958), pp. 30–7.
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• Dutton , C.E. 1878 . On the Velocity of Transmission of Earth Waves . American Journal of Science , 15 : 7 – 7 . 8; W. H. Hobbs (footnote 32), 14; Richard Dixon Oldham, ‘The Geological Interpretation of the Earth-Movements Associated with the Californian Earthquake of April 18th, 1906’, The Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 65 (1909), 1–20, p. 12; W. H. Hobbs (1909) (footnote 35), 262.
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• Davison . 1927 . The Founders of Seismology 81 – 81 . Cambridge C. F. Richter (footnote 35), 30.
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