Charles Lyell

Charles Lyell was born in 1797 at Kinnordy, Scotland, the son of a botanist, and grew up mainly in the south of England. At Oxford he attended the geology lectures of William Buckland and became fascinated by the subject. He trained as a lawyer but gave up law for geology, traveling widely in Europe to study rocks, volcanoes and fossils. His Principles of Geology, published in three volumes from 1830 to 1833, argued that the earth's surface had been formed gradually over immense periods by the same processes, such as erosion, deposition and volcanic activity, that can be observed today, an approach called uniformitarianism. Charles Darwin read the first volume on the voyage of the Beagle, and Lyell later became his friend and supporter. Lyell also named the geological periods Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene. He made two long trips to North America and wrote about the antiquity of humans. He was knighted and later made a baronet, and he died in London in 1875.

Charles Lyell is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: A deeply religious man who struggled to reconcile his beliefs with Darwin's theory of evolution. Source: Wikipedia