From the Museum to the Field: Geology Teaching in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon

Abstract

During the nineteenth century and up to the middle of the twentieth, fieldwork was absent from geology teaching in Portuguese higher teaching institutions. However, fieldwork is considered a distinctive characteristic of geological practice and training. This study presents an overall account of geology teaching in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon and in the former Polytechnic School and shows how fieldwork was introduced in the former. Carlos Teixeira (1910–1982), a professor of geology in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, played a particular role in the process by creating a ‘school of geological fieldwork’ in the Portuguese Geological Survey. This school allowed the strengthening of the relations between the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon and the Portuguese Geological Survey. It can also be perceived as a manoeuvre from the Portuguese geological community to ‘colonize’ the latter and assert its own interests.