Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, KT, (November 14, 1797 - February 22, 1875) was a Scottish lawyer, geologist, and populariser of uniformitarianism.
Charles Lyell was born in Kinnordy, Angus, the eldest of ten children. Lyell's father, also named Charles, was a lawyer and botanist of minor repute and first exposed the younger Charles to the study of nature. Charles spent much of his childhood at the family’s other home, Bartley Lodge in the New Forest, England, where his interest in the natural world was sparked.
Having attended Exeter College, Oxford ending in 1816, Lyell encountered geology as a serious profession under the wing of the naturalist William Buckland. Wilson, Leonard G. "Charles Lyell" Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Ed. Charles Coulston Gillispie. Vol. VIII. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973. Upon graduation he took a professional detour into the law, completing a circuit throughout rural England where he could observe geology. As his eyesight began to fail him during long hours focusing on legal briefs he in turn adopted geology as a full time profession. His first paper, "On a Recent Formation of Freshwater Limestone in Forfarshire", was presented in 1822. By 1827, he had abandoned the law and embarked on a long geological career that would result in the widespread acceptance of the ideas, mainly uniformitarianism, proposed by James Hutton a few decades earlier.
Aside from his work, Lyell had personal interests. In 1832, he married Mary Horner of Bonn, daughter of Leonard Horner (1785-1864), also associated with the Geological Society of London. The new couple spent their honeymoon in Switzerland and Italy on a geological tour of the area. Macomber, Richard W. "Lyell, Sir Charles, Baronet." The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1997.
During the 1840s, he traveled to the United States and Canada, which resulted in his writing two popular travel-and-geology books: 1845's Travels in North America and A Second Visit to the United States (from 1849).
He won the Copley Medal in 1858 and the Wollaston Medal in 1866. After the Great Chicago Fire, Lyell was one of the first to donate books to help found the Chicago Public Library.
His wife Mary died in 1873, two years later 1875, Lyell died as he was revising the twelfth edition of Principles, he was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Lyell crater on the Moon and a crater on Mars were named in his honour. In addition, Mount Lyell in western Tasmania, Australia, located in a profitable mining area, bears Lyell’s name.
