George Julius Poulett Scrope

Who was George Julius Poulett Scrope?

George Julius Poulett Scrope FRS was an English geologist and political economist as well as a magistrate for Stroud in Gloucestershire.

He was 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, graduating BA in 1821. through the influence of Edward Clarke and Adam 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 the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in 1833 as MP 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 FRS.