Charles Lyell (1797–1875) was born at Kinnordy in Forfarshire, Scotland, and studied at Exeter College, Oxford, where William Buckland's lectures drew him to geology. He trained as a barrister but gave up the law for science, and field tours in France, Italy and Sicily in 1828 shaped the argument of the Principles. He was briefly professor of geology at King's College London, served as president of the Geological Society, and wrote the Elements (later Manual) of Elementary Geology, two books of travels in North America and The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863). He was knighted in 1848, made a baronet in 1864, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Principles of Geology is Charles Lyell's argument that the earth's past can be explained by the same causes that are acting on it now, working at their present intensity over immense periods of time. The first edition appeared in three volumes in 1830, 1832 and 1833, under a subtitle describing it as an attempt to explain the former changes of the earth's surface by reference to causes now in operation.
