The Geological Society was founded on 13th November 1807 – 210 years ago today!

Ten years ago, we celebrated our 200th birthday with a year long programme of events – here’s some highlights of what took place…

4567 balloons in flight…

The year began with the launch of 4567 all natural, fully biodegradable environmentally friendly balloons – one for every million years of Earth history – at Burlington House in January 2007

Geoscientist Editor Ted Nield at the balloon launch with some volunteer helpers

Costume Dinner

On the eve of the anniversary itself, our History of Geology Group unveiled a plaque (see above) commemorating the founding of the Society, as part of a two day conference celebrating the Society’s founders and early history.  The evening also featured a dinner at which guests were encouraged to dress in the style of 1807 – with some truly fabulous results…

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Bicentennial Conference

To celebrate our 200th birthday, the Society held a conference at the QE2 centre. Alongside the scientific talks, the event featured the first performance of ‘Antarctic Sonata’ – composed and performed by Kevin Jones and conceived jointly with geologist Prof. Nick Petford of the University of Bournemouth.

Lyell Launch

We also launched the Lyell Centre – now the Lyell Collection – and with it, the new Lyell Room. Both are still going strong, with the Lyell Collection comprising of the Society’s journal titles, Special Publications and key book series – plus journals published on behalf of other societies.

Here’s to the next 210 years! We haven’t made ourselves a cake – but thanks to the more recent success of the Great Geobakeoff, launched in 2014, there are plenty of options to choose from…

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