Robert Mallet
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Robert Mallet FRS (1810–1881), Irish geologist, civil engineer, and inventor who distinguished himself in research on earthquakes.
Mallet was born in Dublin, on June 3, 1810. He was educated at Trinity College in Dublin, and graduated in 1830 at the age of 20. He built the Fastnet Rock lighthouse, southwest of Cape Clear and delivered many works including railway stations and bridge plates. He was awarded the Telford Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1859.
From 1852 to 1858, he was engaged (with his son, John William Mallet) in the preparation of his work, The Earthquake Catalogue of the British Association (1858), and carried out blasting experiments to determine the speed of seismic propagation in sand and solid rock. In 1862, he published two volumes, dealing with the Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 and The First Principles of Observational Seismology. He then brought forward evidence to show that the depth below the earth's surface, whence came the impulse of the Neapolitan earthquake, was about 8–9 geographical miles.
One of Mallet's most important essays was Volcanic Energy: an Attempt to develop its True Origin and Cosmical Relations, in which he sought to show that volcanic heat may be attributed to the effects of crushing, contortion and other disturbances in the crust of the earth; the disturbances leading to the formation of lines of fracture, more or less vertical, down which water would find its way, and if the temperature generated be sufficient volcanic eruptions of steam or lava would follow.
Mallet was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1854, moved to London in 1861, and was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London in 1877. Blind for the last seven years of his life, he died at Clapham, London, on November 5, 1881 and is buried at West Norwood Cemetery.
