Patrick Ganly

Patrick Ganly (1809–1899) was an Irish geologist, surveyor, civil engineer, cartographer and valuator during Griffith's Survey.

He was the first person to discover and describe the usage of cross-bedding in geological stratification to show the 'way up' of rock layers, a discovery overlooked until its independent rediscovery over 70 years later.

[1] In the early 1830s, Ganly had sketched how the ripples of sediment left by a Donegal river north of Carndonagh had resulted in an undulating cross-sectional pattern.

Foot, was lauded as a significant discovery concerning igneous rocks in Killarney, though Ganly himself had already identified them 20 years earlier as he'd surveyed all 32 counties with precision, including correcting errors such as southern slates wrongly being included in the Lower Palaeozoic instead of Carboniferous period.

He read his final paper to the Society in 1861, after it was postponed for two months: "On the past intensity of Sunlight, as indicated by Geological Phenomena".

[4][1][5][6][7] The true depth of Ganly's contribution to geology, the mapping of Ireland, and – through his valuation work – Irish genealogy, was largely unknown until the twentieth Century.