Sir Charles Lyell, poor chap, died 125 years ago today, on February 22nd, 1875. He was 78, and by then the most influential geologist of his day. Yet, when all is said and done, it could be said of him that he merely argued very persuasively the eccentric case of a very visionary predecessor.
Lyell was a Scotsman, born in 1797 near Kirriemuir in Forfarshire. He read for the bar as a young man, but weak eyesight and a growing interest in geology led to his hobby becoming the focus of his life.
In due course, as his experience in the subject grew, he subscribed to the views pioneered half a century before by a fellow-Scotsman, James Hutton, who argued that geological change was slow and gradual, and not the result of inexplicable catastrophes such as Noah's Flood.
It was a revolutionary theory for its time. Until then the Bible had been the natural starting point from which to seek answers to life's very fundamental questions. "In the beginning," according to the Book of Genesis, "the Earth was void and empty, and the face of the deep was wreathed in darkness."
Medieval scholars searched eagerly for clues among their manuscripts as to when precisely this beginning might have been, and with the help of a good imagination and arithmetic, they were able to arrive at very firm conclusions.
In 1785, however, Hutton published a book called The Theory of the Earth in which he pointed out that certain natural processes - like the erosion and the channelling of river valleys - operated on a very long timescale. In order for observed phenomena to have a satisfactory explanation, they must have been in the making for millions, rather than thousands, of years. As he put it: "The result of this physical inquiry is that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end."
Hutton was dull and pedestrian in writing up his theories and, partly as a consequence, his views were derided and wholesomely rejected by the intelligentsia of the day. But Lyell was persuasive. In 1829 he published volume one of his great work, Principles of Geology, in which he championed and won general acceptance for Hutton's "Uniformitarian" theories.
The book was popular and controversial, not least because Lyell's prose was the antithesis of Hutton's, being witty and subtle, with his theories argued beautifully. He presented the available evidence with such clarity and force that the world of science quickly accepted his conclusions. Indeed, the modern science of geology could be said to date from the publication of that very famous work.