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James Croll Facts & Worksheets

James Croll was a Scottish scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society who developed a theory about climate change.

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James Croll was a Scottish scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society who developed a theory about climate change. He linked climate change, Earth’s ice ages, and astronomy, and proposed that climate change is caused by changes in the amount of energy the Earth receives from the sun.

See the fact file below for more information on the James Croll or alternatively, you can download our 21-page James Croll worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

EARLY LIFE OF JAMES CROLL

  • James Croll was born in Little Whitefield, near Perthshire in Scotland, on January 2, 1821.
  • He was the son of a mason and had four brothers.
  • Due to working with his parents on their homestead, coupled with chronic headaches, Croll only spent six years in formal schooling and dropped out shortly after.
  • He was largely self-educated.
  • His interest in science began at the age of 13 through reading various scientific papers and books.
  • Croll also took an interest in spiritual topics and books about theology and philosophy.
  • Through reading, Croll was persuaded that human perception of the external world is reliable, and that whatever exists has a cause for being so.
  • Croll had several jobs during his teenage years including a laborer, apprentice wheelwright, tea merchant, hotel manager, and insurance agent.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY

  • In 1854, Croll published a short pamphlet on “predestination”, then a follow-up work in 1857 that expanded on the metaphysics of theism called Philosophy of Theism.
  • In 1859, he accepted a job as a janitor at the museum of the  Andersonian University in Glasgow.
  • It was here that Croll was able to access the University Library. He was thrilled about being so close to the library as it meant he could get access to books about physics, astronomy, chemistry, and geology.
  • In 1864, Croll accepted a job at the Scottish Geological Survey in Edinburgh; by this point he was writing serious scientific papers.
  • During this year, he worked with Sir Charles Lyell on the links between ice ages and variations in the Earth’s orbit.

THEORY OF ICE AGES

  • At the time Croll began his work in Glasgow, there was debate among geologists about the glacial drifts and icebergs in Scotland and North America and where they came from.
  • Some geologists thought that the discovery of fossils indicated warm climatic conditions within the glacial deposits, which meant that interglacial episodes were occuring.
  • Croll worked to identify eight glacial cycles in the last million years, then showed how longer-term variations in the tilt of the Earth’s axis were also contributing to these episodes.
  • At this point, the theory that icebergs were responsible for the majority of heating and cooling patterns on Earth was gradually being disproved, although Croll’s ideas were not totally accepted at first.
  • Because of Croll’s ideas, he was appointed Secretary to the Scottish staff of the Geological Survey in 1867 (a position he held until his retirement in 1881).
  • Croll continued to research probable causes of climatic change, and in 1875 he published a volume called “Climate and Time”.
  • In the book, he asserted that glacial cycles arise indirectly from cosmical causes; he investigated the relationships between the Earth’s orbit and its physical relations to the Glacial period.
  • He found out that high eccentricity coincided with cycles of extreme cold on the Earth.
  • Eccentricity measures the amount by which an astronomical object’s orbit around another body deviates from a perfect circle.
  • In this case, Croll was looking to see if the amount the Earth’s orbit around the sun deviated had any impact on climate change, or if it showed any patterns; through extensive research, he concluded that it definitely did!

OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS AND LEGACY

  • Croll continued to work on his theories, and developed one that explained that decreases in winter sunlight would favor snow accumulation.
  • He also argued that snow could change the pattern of trade winds, which had an impact on currents in the Gulf Stream and on ice ages; this led to his prediction of many ice ages and the idea that the last ice ages should have ended about 80,000 years ago.
  • As this was a popular area of discovery at the time, geologists looked for a way to explain and confirm this theory, but after other work poured in, his theory was ruled out.
  • Near the end of the 19th century, Croll’s work was widely discussed but also discredited.
  • His basic idea of orbitally-influenced variations was developed by Serbian geologist and mathematician Milutin Milankovitch, who eventually modified and developed Croll’s ideas into what are now known as the Milankovitch cycles.
  • In 1876, Croll was elected Fellow of the Royal Society and awarded an honorary degree by the University of St. Andrews.
  • His final work The Philosophical Basis of Evolution argued that the production of motion and the determination of motion were different, and associated evolution with this continuous direction of motion.
  • Croll retired in 1881 due to ill health, but he kept reading, writing, and publishing; he died on December 15, 1890.

James Croll Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about James Croll across 21 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use James Croll worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about James Croll who was a Scottish scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society who developed a theory about climate change. He linked climate change, Earth’s ice ages, and astronomy, and proposed that climate change is caused by changes in the amount of energy the Earth receives from the sun.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • James Croll Facts
  • Timeline of Accomplishments
  • James Croll Crossword
  • Quote Analysis
  • Five Words
  • James Croll Wordsearch
  • Opinion Piece
  • Commemorative Stamp
  • Theory in Plain Words
  • Delving into the Dictionary
  • Croll and Milankovic

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Use With Any Curriculum

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