Lyell, SIR CHARLES

Lyell, SIR CHARLES, geologist, was the eldest son of Charles Lyell, Esq., of Kinnordy, Forfarshire, where he was born 14th November 1797. After receiving his early education at Midhurst, in Sussex, he entered Exeter College, Oxford, and graduated as B.A. in 1819. At Oxford he attended the lectures of Buckland, and thus acquired a taste for the science he afterwards did so much to promote. After leaving the university he studied law, and in due time was called to the bar; but his circumstances not rendering a profession necessary for a livelihood, he devoted himself to geology, and made tours in 1824, and again in 1828-30, over various parts of Europe, and published the results of his investigations in the Transactions of the Geological Society and elsewhere. His great work, The Principles of Geology (3 vols. 1830-33), may be ranked next after Darwin's Origin of Species among the books which have exercised the most powerful influence on the direction of scientific thought in the 19th century. It broke down the belief in the necessity of stupendous convulsions in past times; and taught, as had long before been maintained by Hutton and Playfair, that the greatest geological changes might be produced by the forces still at work on the earth. It was subsequently divided into two parts, published as two distinct works—viz. The Principles of Geology; or the Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants (12th ed. 1876); and The Elements of Geology; or the Ancient Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants. The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863) startled the public by its unbiased attitude towards Darwin's Origin of Species. Lyell also published Travels in North America (1845) and A Second Visit to the United States (1849). During the second sojourn, when he also visited Nova Scotia, he estimated the recession of the rock at Niagara, and the amount of deposition of alluvium at the delta of the Mississippi. On the opening of King's College, London, in 1832 Lyell was appointed professor of Geology, an office which he soon resigned. In 1836, and again in 1850, he was elected president of the Geological Society, and in 1864 president of the British Association. He was knighted in 1848, and created a baronet in 1864. He died 22d February 1875, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. See his Life, Letters, and Journals (2 vols. 1881); and the article GEOLOGY.