Who Was James Hutton?
James Hutton, 1726-1797 was in some ways the founder of geology in Britain. A Scotsman who lived in Edinburgh, Hutton was fascinated by minerals, rocks and fossils. In 1795 he published his works in a volume called ‘A theory of the Earth with Proofs and Illustratives’. This work outlined the basic principles and science of geology, but was a turgid and heavy read, which led to his work not being readily understood. The third volume of his work indeed, was not published until 1899 (two years after his death) and again was not readily comprehensible. It was only in 1802, some five years after his death, that a friend of his, Professor John Playfair, published an explantion of Hutton’s work entitled ‘Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth’ in plain and simple English. This explained all hutton’s theories and when the Geological Society was formed in 1807, they advanced the thinking which Hutton had begun and the rest is history !
