William ‘Strata’ Smith wasn’t from York, nor, to be fair, is he famous. But he should be: he is known today as “the father of Geology” and a significant influence on thinkers like Charles Darwin. And he gave the first indication of the great work that was to make his name – the “map that changed the world” – from the top of York Minster.

William Smith was a yeoman farmer turned canal engineer: a manual labourer at a time when science was the province of the leisured classes. It was also bound by the dogmatic idea that God made the world in just six days around 6,000 years ago.

Smith grew to believe through his observation of rock strata, gained while building canals in the West country, that the evidence of what would become known as geology did not support a literal reading of the biblical creation story. He realised that seams of different rock must have been laid down at different times, potentially millions of years apart. And the geology of the United Kingdom, if mapped out, he believed, would support this claim.

Ironically, Smith chose to outline the earliest incarnation of this theory on top of one of the biggest Christian churches in England: at the top of the central tower of York Minster. There, it is claimed, he pointed out to his travelling companions that the Yorkshire Wolds, some thirty miles to the east and which he had never visited, were unmistakeably made of chalk. And, he said, he could tell this because they had followed the same seam of limestone up from the downs of Wiltshire and Hampshire.

Smith was proved right, and ultimately made a map of the geological make-up of the entire of Great Britain. He was belatedly honoured for his work, but not before he had fallen into debt, been imprisoned in London and ultimately forgotten.

His work was instrumental in the later theories of geologists like William Buckland and separated the link between science and dogmatic Christianity for all time. And once scientists accepted that the book of Genesis was not to be taken as a literal account of the creation of the Earth, the floodgates were open for Darwin and all that followed.

Smith’s association with York would continue in a less grand vein: his wife spent her last days in York Asylum (now Bootham Hospital). He became a resident of Scarborough, where his enormous fossil collection can still be seen.

Simon Winchester wrote a bestselling account of William Smith’s life which is well worth reading for anyone interested in the history of science in general or geology in particular. It’s called The Map That Changed the World.