right|thumbnail|Sir Roderick Murchison
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right|thumbnail|Sir Roderick Impey Murchison posing with cane, not dated

'''Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 1st Baronet''' KCB FRS (Scottish geologist who first described and investigated the Silurian system.

==Early life==
He was born at Wellesley in Galicia, and was present at the actions of Roliça and Vimeiro.  Subsequently under Sir John Moore he took part in the retreat to Corunna and the final battle there.

==Geology==
After eight years of service he left the army, and married the daughter of General Hugonin, of Nursted House, Hampshire.  They spent two years in William Fitton, Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin.

Exploring with his wife, he studied the geology of the south of England, devoting special attention to the rocks of the north-west of Auvergne, parts of southern France, northern Italy, Tyrol and Switzerland. A little later, with Sedgwick as his companion, he attacked the difficult problem of the geological structure of the Alps, and their joint paper giving the results of their study is one of the classics in the literature of Alpine geology.

==Silurian system==

In 1831 he went to the border of England and Wales, to attempt to discover whether the greywacke rocks underlying the Old Red Sandstone could be grouped into a definite order of succession. The result was the establishment of the Silurian system under which were grouped for the first time a remarkable series of formations, each replete with distinctive organic remains other than and very different from those of the other rocks of England. These researches, together with descriptions of the coal-fields and overlying formations in south Wales and the English border counties, were embodied in ''The Silurian System'' (1839).

The establishment of the Silurian system was followed by that of the Devonian system, an investigation in which Murchison assisted, both in the south-west of England and in the Rhineland. Soon afterwards Murchison projected an important geological campaign in Russia with the view of extending to that part of the Continent the classification he had succeeded in elaborating for the older rocks of western Europe. He was accompanied by Edouard de Verneuil (1805 - 1873) and Count Alexander von Keyserling (1815 - 1891), in conjunction with whom he produced a work on Russia and the Ural Mountains. The publication of this monograph in 1845 completes the first and most active half of Murchison’s scientific career.

In 1846 he was knighted, and in the same year he presided over the meeting of the British Association at Southampton. During the later years of his life a large part of his time was devoted to the affairs of the Royal Geographical Society, of which he was in 1830 one of the founders, and he was president 1843-1845, 1851-1853, 1856-1859 and 1862-1871.

==Scotland==

The chief geological investigation of the last decade of his life was devoted to the Highlands of Scotland, where he wrongly believed he had succeeded in showing that the vast masses of crystalline Benjamin Peach and John Horne. Their subsequent research showed that the infraposition of the fossiliferous rocks is not their original place, but had been brought about by a gigantic system of dislocations, whereby successive masses of the oldest gneisses, have been torn up from below and thrust bodily over the younger formations. 

In 1855 Murchison was appointed director-general of the British Geological Survey and director of the Royal School of Mines and the Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, London, in succession to Sir Henry De la Beche, who had been the first to hold these offices. Official routine now occupied much of his time, but he found opportunity for the Highland researches just alluded to, and also for preparing successive editions of his work ''Siluria'' (1854, ed. 5, 1872), which was meant to present the main features of the original Silurian System together with a digest of subsequent discoveries, particularly of those which showed the extension of the Silurian classification into other countries.

thumb|Сэр Родерик Мурчисон

Сэр '''Родерик Импи Мурчисон''' (; шотландский пермский геологические периоды.

Родился в Таррадейле, Шотландия. Сын Кеннета Мурчисона (умер в 1796 году). Посещал среднюю школу в Дареме, затем военный колледж в Грейт Марлоу для подготовки к армии. 

В Веллингтоном в Галисии и участвовал в битвах при Роли́се (Roliça) и Вимэ́йру (Vimeiro). Затем под командованием сэра Джона Мура он принял участие в отступлении к Ла-Корунья и финальном сражении.

В Европе, в основном, в Италии. В Англии, и Мурчисон познакомился с геологией. Он вступил в Лондонское геологическое общество и вскоре показал себя как один из наиболее активных его членов. Среди его коллег были Адам Седжвик, Уильям Конибер, Уильям Бакленд, Уильям Фиттон и Чарльз Лайелл.

Исследуя вместе с женой геологию юга Англии, он обратил особое внимание на скалы северо-запада Суррея, о которых, с помощью Фиттона, он написал свою первую научную работу, представленную обществу в 1825 году. Обратив внимание на геологию континента, он вместе с Лайеллом исследовал вулканическую область Оверни, части южной Франции, северной Италии, Тироля и Швейцарии. Некоторое время спустя, в сотрудничестве с Седжвиком, он приступил к изучению геологической структуры Альп, и их совместная статья, посвящённая результатам этих исследований, стала классикой среди литературы о геологии Альп.

В Англии и силурийским.

В девонский период.

В России обосновал выделение пермского периода.