Founded at the Freemason's Tavern in Lincoln Inn's Fields, London, on November 13th 1807, the Geological Society (of London) has recently celebrated its bicentenary. The Society has a lot to be proud of, not least of which is its status as the world's oldest learned society devoted solely to earth sciences. The Making of the Geological Society of London marks this bicentenary with a collection of some 24 essays on a variety of appropriate topics and is ably edited by Cherry Lewis and Simon Knell of the History of Geology Group, which is affiliated to the Society. The editors have usefully organized the contributions, which range from papers on the role of specific individuals, such as George Bellas Greenough; the role played by other science-related groups and disciplines, such as chemists, the military and medical men; contemporary developments in the wider world, such as France, Germany, America and Australia and geology's social context, such as its official recognition and how it was perceived by the wider public. These are all gathered into broader themes such as ‘The Founders’, ‘The Status of Geology’ and ‘The Nature of Geology’ at the time when the Society was formed.

The foundation of the Society, its relationship to other scientific societies, its membership, their researches, debates and publications have been integral to the development of modern geology in Britain and beyond, especially in the first few decades of the 19th century, when geological discoveries and arguments were widely broadcast in the print media. Consequently, the history of that foundation is not just of interest to historians of science but should also be of interest and concern to the whole earth science community.

As Cherry Lewis writes in her Preface, the aim of the volume is to draw ‘. . . readers away from the conventional narrative about how the Society was inaugurated and to challenge some of the myths that have grown up in the past 200 years’. That received narrative was supplied mainly by the first president George Bellas Greenough, who cobbled it together some 25 years after the event. Greenough's somewhat unreliable version then formed the basis for most subsequent accounts until the 1960s when Martin Rudwick led the ongoing reassessment of the story. Altogether, it is an intriguing tale, which, as I guess most geologists know, involved the role of the social ‘outsider’ William Smith and his geological map, the Society's own map, compiled by Greenough, and the subsequent ‘canonization’ of Smith as the ‘Father of Geology’. Again as Cherry Lewis writes, this modern reinterpretation of the Society's history, along with several of the contributions in this volume ‘will become, or continue to be, the starting point for anyone looking back to these events [of a hundred years ago]’.

I was struck in particular by Martin Rudwick's reproduction of some of Thomas Webster's wonderful illustrations of the structure of the Isle of Wight and Webster's letters from 1811–13 describing his observations of the rocks and fossils and their correlation with the Paris Basin. Webster based his correlation on Cuvier & Brongniart's (Reference Cuvier and Brongniart1808) recently published essay and section, along with Brongniart's beautiful illustration of the fossils.

Additionally, Webster's pioneering work is the subject of Noah Heringman's contribution, which explores the fascinating link between the antiquarian tradition and discourse on ruins and geological phenomena as the ruins of prehistory. They give a very direct insight into the very considerable level of understanding and expertise of the time that was building on even older European experience, such as depicted in Saussure's (Reference Saussure1779–1796) monumental work on the Alps.

The appended 1808 ‘mission statement’ for the newly founded Society, called ‘Geological Inquiries’, makes fascinating reading. It is a list of geological quests for the membership to pursue and begins with a question as to whether mountains are ‘. . . solitary, or in groups, or do they form a chain?’ and ends by asking whether ‘among the various organic remains, can any traces be observed of the existence of man? They illustrate just how much has been achieved by geologists over the last 200 years and the Geological Society's role in these achievements is something that is well celebrated in this volume.