Charles Lyell
Sir Charles Lyell | |
---|---|
Born | Kinnordy House, Angus, Scotland | 14 November 1797
Died | 22 February 1875 Harley Street, London, England | (aged 77)
Resting place | The Nave of Westminster Abbey |
Alma mater | Exeter College, Oxford |
Known for | Uniformitarianism |
Spouse | Mary Horner Lyell |
Awards | Royal Medal (1834) Copley Medal (1858) Wollaston Medal (1866) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Geology |
Institutions | King's College London |
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, FRS (14 November 1797 – 22 February 1875) was a Scottish geologist who demonstrated the power of known natural causes in explaining the earth's history. He is best known today for his association with Charles Darwin and as the author of Principles of Geology (1830–33), which presented to a wide public audience the idea that the earth was shaped by the same natural processes still in operation today, operating at similar intensities. The philosopher William Whewell dubbed this gradualistic view "uniformitarianism" and contrasted it with catastrophism, which had been championed by Georges Cuvier and was better accepted in Europe.[1] The combination of evidence and eloquence in Principles convinced a wide range of readers of the significance of "deep time" for understanding the earth and environment.[2]
Lyell's scientific contributions included a pioneering explanation of climate change, in which shifting boundaries between oceans and continents could be used to explain long-term variations in temperature and rainfall. Lyell also gave influential explanations of earthquakes and developed the theory of gradual "backed up-building" of volcanoes. In stratigraphy his division of the Tertiary period into the Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene was highly influential. He incorrectly conjectured that icebergs were the impetus behind the transport of glacial erratics, and that silty loess deposits might have settled out of flood waters. His creation of a separate period for human history, entitled the 'Recent', is widely cited as providing the foundations for the modern discussion of the Anthropocene.[3]
Building on the innovative work of James Hutton and his follower John Playfair, Lyell favoured an indefinitely long age for the earth, despite evidence suggesting an old but finite age.[4] He was a close friend of Charles Darwin, and contributed significantly to Darwin's thinking on the processes involved in evolution. As Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species, "He who can read Sir Charles Lyell's grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural science, yet does not admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume."[5] Lyell helped to arrange the simultaneous publication in 1858 of papers by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace on natural selection, despite his personal religious qualms about the theory. He later published evidence from geology of the time man had existed on the earth.
Biography
Lyell was born into a wealthy family, on 14 November 1797, at the family's
The
Lyell entered
In 1832, Lyell married
During the 1840s, Lyell travelled to the United States and Canada, and wrote two popular travel-and-geology books: Travels in North America (1845) and A Second Visit to the United States (1849). In 1866, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. After the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, Lyell was one of the first to donate books to help found the Chicago Public Library.
In 1841, Lyell was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.[9]
Lyell's wife died in 1873, and two years later (in 1875) Lyell himself died as he was revising the twelfth edition of Principles.[8][10] He is buried in Westminster Abbey where there is a bust to him by William Theed in the north aisle.[11]
Lyell was knighted (
Sir Charles Lyell was buried at Westminster Abbey on 27 February 1875. The pallbearers included T. H. Huxley, the Rev. W. S. Symonds and Mr John Carrick Moore.[18]
Career and major writings
Lyell had private means, and earned further income as an author. He came from a prosperous family, worked briefly as a lawyer in the 1820s, and held the post of Professor of Geology at King's College London in the 1830s. From 1830 onward his books provided both income and fame. Each of his three major books was a work continually in progress. All three went through multiple editions during his lifetime, although many of his friends (such as Darwin) thought the first edition of the Principles was the best written.[19][20] Lyell used each edition to incorporate additional material, rearrange existing material, and revisit old conclusions in light of new evidence.
Throughout his life, Lyell kept a remarkable series of nearly three hundred manuscript notebooks and diaries. These span Lyell’s long scientific career (1825-1874), and offer an unrivalled insight into personal influences, field observations, thoughts and relationships. They were acquired in 2019 by the University of Edinburgh's Heritage Collections, thanks to a fundraising campaign, with many generous individual and institutional donors from the UK and overseas. Highlights include his travels throughout Europe and the United States of America, the drafts of his correspondence with the likes of Charles Darwin, his geological and landscape sketches and his constant gathering of evidence and refinement of his theories.[21]
The central argument in Principles was that the present is the key to the past – a concept of the Scottish Enlightenment which David Hume had stated as "all inferences from experience suppose ... that the future will resemble the past", and James Hutton had described when he wrote in 1788 that "from what has actually been, we have data for concluding with regard to that which is to happen thereafter."[23] Geological remains from the distant past can, and should, be explained by reference to geological processes now in operation and thus directly observable. Lyell's interpretation of geological change as the steady accumulation of minute changes over enormously long spans of time was a powerful influence on the young Charles Darwin. Lyell asked Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle, to search for erratic boulders on the survey voyage of the Beagle, and just before it set out FitzRoy gave Darwin Volume 1 of the first edition of Lyell's Principles. When the Beagle made its first stop ashore at St Jago in the Cape Verde islands, Darwin found rock formations which seen "through Lyell's eyes" gave him a revolutionary insight into the geological history of the island, an insight he applied throughout his travels.
While in South America Darwin received Volume 2 which considered the ideas of
Although Darwin discussed evolutionary ideas with him from 1842, Lyell continued to reject evolution in each of the first nine editions of the Principles. He encouraged Darwin to publish, and following the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species, Lyell finally offered a tepid endorsement of evolution in the tenth edition of Principles.
Elements of Geology began as the fourth volume of the third edition of Principles: Lyell intended the book to act as a suitable field guide for students of geology.[6] The systematic, factual description of geological formations of different ages contained in Principles grew so unwieldy, however, that Lyell split it off as the Elements in 1838. The book went through six editions, eventually growing to two volumes and ceasing to be the inexpensive, portable handbook that Lyell had originally envisioned. Late in his career, therefore, Lyell produced a condensed version titled Student's Elements of Geology that fulfilled the original purpose.
Scientific contributions
Lyell's geological interests ranged from
Uniformitarianism
From 1830 to 1833 his multi-volume
Never was there a doctrine more calculated to foster indolence, and to blunt the keen edge of curiosity, than this assumption of the discordance between the former and the existing causes of change... The student was taught to despond from the first. Geology, it was affirmed, could never arise to the rank of an exact science... [With catastrophism] we see the ancient spirit of speculation revived, and a desire manifestly shown to cut, rather than patiently untie, the Gordian Knot.-Sir Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, 1854 edition, p. 196; quoted by Stephen Jay Gould.[27]
Lyell saw himself as "the spiritual saviour of geology, freeing the science from the old dispensation of Moses."[28] The two terms, uniformitarianism and catastrophism, were both coined by William Whewell;[29] in 1866 R. Grove suggested the simpler term continuity for Lyell's view, but the old terms persisted. In various revised editions (12 in all, through 1872), Principles of Geology was the most influential geological work in the middle of the 19th century, and did much to put geology on a modern footing.
Geological surveys
Lyell noted the "economic advantages" that geological surveys could provide, citing their felicity in mineral-rich countries and provinces. Modern surveys, like the
Volcanoes and geological dynamics
Before the work of Lyell, phenomena such as earthquakes were understood by the destruction that they brought. One of the contributions that Lyell made in Principles was to explain the cause of earthquakes.[30] Lyell, in contrast focused on recent earthquakes (150 yrs), evidenced by surface irregularities such as faults, fissures, stratigraphic displacements and depressions.[30]
Lyell's work on volcanoes focused largely on
Stratigraphy and human history
Lyell was a key figure in establishing the classification of more recent geological deposits, long known as the
Glaciers
In Principles of Geology (first edition, vol. 3, ch. 2, 1833)[8] Lyell proposed that icebergs could be the means of transport for erratics. During periods of global warming, ice breaks off the poles and floats across submerged continents, carrying debris with it, he conjectured. When the iceberg melts, it rains down sediments upon the land. Because this theory could account for the presence of diluvium, the word drift became the preferred term for the loose, unsorted material, today called till. Furthermore, Lyell believed that the accumulation of fine angular particles covering much of the world (today called loess) was a deposit settled from mountain flood water.[33] Today some of Lyell's mechanisms for geological processes have been disproven, though many have stood the test of time.[7] His observational methods and general analytical framework remain in use today as foundational principles in geology.[7]
Evolution
Lyell initially accepted the conventional view of other men of science, that the fossil record indicated a directional geohistory in which species went extinct. Around 1826, when he was on circuit, he read Lamarck's Zoological Philosophy and on 2 March 1827 wrote to Mantell, expressing admiration, but cautioning that he read it "rather as I hear an advocate on the wrong side, to know what can be made of the case in good hands".:[34]
- I devoured Lamarck... his theories delighted me... I am glad that he has been courageous enough and logical enough to admit that his argument, if pushed as far as it must go, if worth anything, would prove that men may have come from the Ourang-Outang. But after all, what changes species may really undergo!... That the earth is quite as old as he supposes, has long been my creed...[35]
He struggled with the implications for human dignity, and later in 1827 wrote private notes on Lamarck's ideas. Lyell reconciled transmutation of species with natural theology by suggesting that it would be as much a "remarkable manifestation of creative Power" as creating each species separately. He countered Lamarck's views by rejecting continued cooling of the earth in favour of "a fluctuating cycle", a long-term steady-state geohistory as proposed by James Hutton. The fragmentary fossil record already showed "a high class of fishes, close to reptiles" in the Carboniferous period which he called "the first Zoological era", and quadrupeds could also have existed then. In November 1827, after William Broderip found a Middle Jurassic fossil of the early mammal Didelphis, Lyell told his father that "There was everything but man even as far back as the Oolite."[34] Lyell inaccurately portrayed Lamarckism as a response to the fossil record, and said it was falsified by a lack of progress. He said in the second volume of Principles that the occurrence of this one fossil of the higher mammalia "in these ancient strata, is as fatal to the theory of successive development, as if several hundreds had been discovered."[36]
In the first edition of Principles, the first volume briefly set out Lyell's concept of a steady state with no real progression of fossils. The sole exception was the advent of humanity, with no great physical distinction from animals, but with absolutely unique intellectual and moral qualities. The second volume dismissed Lamarck's claims of animal forms arising from habits, continuous spontaneous generation of new life, and man having evolved from lower forms. Lyell explicitly rejected Lamarck's concept of transmutation of species, drawing on Cuvier's arguments, and concluded that species had been created with stable attributes. He discussed the geographical distribution of plants and animals, and proposed that every species of plant or animal was descended from a pair or individual, originated in response to differing external conditions. Species would regularly go extinct, in a "struggle for existence" between hybrids, or a "war one with another" due to population pressure. He was vague about how replacement species formed, portraying this as an infrequent occurrence which could rarely be observed.[37]
The leading man of science Sir
- If I had stated... the possibility of the introduction or origination of fresh species being a natural, in contradistinction to a miraculous process, I should have raised a host of prejudices against me, which are unfortunately opposed at every step to any philosopher who attempts to address the public on these mysterious subjects ...[40]
As a result of his letters and, no doubt, personal conversations, Huxley and Haeckel were convinced that, at the time he wrote Principles, he believed new species had arisen by natural methods. Sedgwick wrote worried letters to him about this.[41]
By the time Darwin returned from the Beagle survey expedition in 1836, he had begun to doubt Lyell's ideas about the permanence of species. He continued to be a close personal friend, and Lyell was one of the first scientists to support On the Origin of Species, though he did not subscribe to all its contents. Lyell was also a friend of Darwin's closest colleagues, Hooker and Huxley, but unlike them he struggled to square his religious beliefs with evolution. This inner struggle has been much commented on. He had particular difficulty in believing in natural selection as the main motive force in evolution.[42][43][44]
Lyell and Hooker were instrumental in arranging the peaceful co-publication of the theory of natural selection by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858: each had arrived at the theory independently. Lyell's views on gradual change and the power of a long time scale were important because Darwin thought that populations of an organism changed very slowly.
Although Lyell rejected evolution at the time of writing the Principles,[45] after the Darwin–Wallace papers and the Origin Lyell wrote in one of his notebooks on 3 May 1860:
- Mr. Darwin has written a work which will constitute an era in geology & natural history to show that... the descendants of common parents may become in the course of ages so unlike each other as to be entitled to rank as a distinct species, from each other or from some of their progenitors ...[46]
Lyell's acceptance of natural selection, Darwin's proposed mechanism for evolution, was equivocal, and came in the tenth edition of Principles.
In other respects Antiquity was a success. It sold well, and it "shattered the tacit agreement that mankind should be the sole preserve of theologians and historians".[51] But when Lyell wrote that it remained a profound mystery how the huge gulf between man and beast could be bridged, Darwin wrote "Oh!" in the margin of his copy.[25]
Legacy
Places named after Lyell:
- Lyell, New Zealand
- Lyell Butte, in the Grand Canyon
- Lyell Canyon in Yosemite National Park
- Lyell Fork, one of two large forks of the Tuolumne River
- Lyell Land (Greenland)
- Lyell Glacier
- Lyell Glacier, South Georgia
- Mount Lyell (California)
- Mount Lyell (Canada)
- Mount Lyell (Tasmania)
- Lyell Avenue (Rochester, NY)
Bibliography
Principles of Geology
- Principles of Geology 1st edition, 1st vol. Jan. 1830 (John Murray, London).[52]
- Principles of Geology 1st edition, 2nd vol. Jan. 1832 [53]
- Principles of Geology 1st edition, 3rd vol. May 1833[54]
- Principles of Geology 2nd edition, 1st vol. 1832
- Principles of Geology 2nd edition, 2nd vol. Jan. 1833
- Principles of Geology 3rd edition, 4 vols. May 1834
- Principles of Geology 4th edition, 4 vols. June 1835
- Principles of Geology 5th edition, 4 vols. March 1837
- Principles of Geology 6th edition, 3 vols. June 1840
- Principles of Geology 7th edition, 1 vol. Feb. 1847
- Principles of Geology 8th edition, 1 vol. May 1850
- Principles of Geology 9th edition, 1 vol. June 1853
- Principles of Geology 10th edition, 1866–68
- Principles of Geology 11th edition, 2 vols. 1872
- Principles of Geology 12th edition, 2 vols. 1875 (published posthumously)
Elements of Geology
- Elements of Geology 1 vol. 1st edition, July 1838 (John Murray, London)
- Elements of Geology 2 vols. 2nd edition, July 1841
- Elements of Geology (Manual of Elementary Geology) 1 vol. 3rd edition, Jan. 1851
- Elements of Geology (Manual of Elementary Geology) 1 vol. 4th edition, Jan. 1852
- Elements of Geology (Manual of Elementary Geology) 1 vol. 5th edition, 1855
- Elements of Geology 6th edition, 1865
- Elements of Geology, The Student's Series, 1871
Travels in North America
- Lyell, C. (1845). Travels in North America. Vol. 1. London: John Murray.
- Lyell, C. (1845). Travels in North America. Vol. 2. London: John Murray.
- Lyell, C. (1849). A Second Visit to the United States of North America. Vol. 1. London: John Murray.[55]
- Lyell, C. (1849). A Second Visit to the United States of North America. Vol. 2. London: John Murray.[55]
Antiquity of Man
- Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man 1 vol. 1st edition, Feb. 1863 (John Murray, London)[56]
- Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man 1 vol. 2nd edition, April 1863
- Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man 1 vol. 3rd edition, Nov. 1863
- Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man 1 vol. 4th edition, May 1873
Life, Letters, and Journals
- Lyell, Katharine Murray, ed. (1881). Life, Letters, and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell. Vol. 1. London: John Murray.[57]
- Lyell, Katharine Murray, ed. (1881). Life, Letters, and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell. Vol. 2. London: John Murray.[57]
Notes
- ^ Cannon (1961), pp. 301–314.
- ^ McPhee 1982.
- ^ Crutzen, Paul. "The 'Anthropocene'" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 April 2015. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
- ^ Rudwick (2014).
- ^ Darwin, Charles. "On the Origin of Species". Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online. John Murray. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
- ^ a b c d Bailey (1962).
- ^ a b c d e f g Wilson 1973.
- ^ a b c d MaComber 1997.
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 12 April 2021.
- ^ "Charles Lyell". Westminster Abbey. Retrieved 8 September 2018.
- ^ Hall 1966, p. 53.
- ^ "No. 20905". The London Gazette. 13 October 1848. p. 3692.
- ^ "No. 22878". The London Gazette. 22 July 1864. p. 3665.
- ^ Russell, Steph (2011). "Lyell". theprow.org.nz. Retrieved 8 September 2018.
- ^ "The empire city: street and harbour nomenclature". Wairarapa Daily Times. 5 August 1908. Retrieved 10 November 2022 – via Paperspast.
- ^ Hayward, H. M. (9 April 1910). "Lyell or Lyall?". Evening Post. Retrieved 10 November 2022 – via Paperspast.
- ^ White (1958), pp. 99–105.
- ^ "Funeral of Sir Charles Lyell this day". The Sun. London. 27 February 1875. p. 5.
- ^ Darwin, F. (1887). Life and letters of Charles Darwin. Vol. II. London. p. 90.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Darwin, F; Seward, A.C. (1903). More letters of Charles Darwin. Vol. II. London. p. 232.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ "The Sir Charles Lyell Collection". The University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
- ^ Thanukos 2012.
- ^ Mathieson, Elizabeth Lincoln (13 May 2002). "The Present is the Key to the Past is the Key to the Future". The Geological Society of America. Archived from the original on 9 March 2016. Retrieved 28 September 2010.
- ^ a b Judd (1910).
- ^ a b Bynum (1984), pp. 153–187.
- ^ Smalley, Gaudenyi & Jovanovic (2015), pp. 45–50.
- ^ Galilei, Galileo (2001). Stephen Jay Gould (ed.). Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems. New York: Modern Science Library. pp. ix–x.
- ^ Porter 1976, p. 91.
- ^ Whewell, William 1837. History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. IV of the Historical and Philosophical Works of William Whewell. Chapter VIII The two antagonistic doctrines of geology. [reprint of 3rd edition of 1857, publ. Cass 1967].
- ^ a b Adams (1938).
- ^ Stafford (1989).
- ^ Lyell, Charles (1839). Nouveaux éléments de géologie (in French). Paris, France: Pitois-Levranet. p. 621.
- ^ Lyell, Charles (1881). "XXIV". Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell. John Murray. p. 110.
You hint at icebergs and northern waves. The former has no doubt had its influence, and when icebergs turn over, or fall to pieces, huge waves are caused not merely from the north. But it has always seemed to me that much more influence ought to be attributed to simple denudation where beds of loose sand, gravel, or mud were upheaved, and sometimes alternately depressed and upraised in an open sea. The exposure of such destructible materials must have led to the confusion you allude to, but much less so where the beds were protected in fiords, &c. The broken fossils found in these strata would agree with my denudation hypothesis, which I think strengthened by the frequent regular re-stratification of the beds containing the deep and shallow water species. - ^ a b Rudwick (2010), pp. 244–250.
- ^ Lyell K. 1881. The life and letters of Sir Charles Lyell. 2 vols, London. vol. 1 p. 168
- ^ Ruse 1999, p. 76.
- ^ Ruse 1999, pp. 75–77.
- ^ Babbage 1838, pp. 225–227.
- ^ Ruse 1999, p. 84.
- ^ Lyell to William Whewell, 7 March 1837. In Lyell K. 1881. The life and letters of Sir Charles Lyell. 2 vols, London. vol. 2 p. 5
- ^ Judd (1910), pp. 83–86, Ch. 8.
- ^ Bowler (2003), pp. 129–134, 149–150, 215.
- ^ Mayr (1982), pp. 375–381, 404–408.
- ^ Bartholomew (1973), pp. 261–303.
- ^ Lyell (1832), pp. 20–21.
- ^ Wilson (1970), p. 407.
- ^ Desmond (1982), p. 179: "Even Charles Lyell agreed... that 'natural selection was a force quite subordinate to that variety-making or creative power to which all the wonders of the organic world must be referred.' "
- ^ Burkhardt F. and Smith S. 1982–present. The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Cambridge, vol. 11, pp. 173, 181.
- ^ Burkhardt F. and Smith S. 1982–present. The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Cambridge, vol. 11, p. 223.
- ^ Browne (2003), p. 219.
- ^ Browne (2003), p. 218.
- ^ Lyell, Charles (1830). Principles of geology. Vol. 1. London: John Murray – via darwin-online.org.uk.
- ^ Lyell, Charles (1832). Principles of geology. Vol. 2. London: John Murray – via darwin-online.org.uk.
- ^ Lyell, Charles (1833). Principles of geology. Vol. 3. London: John Murray – via darwin-online.org.uk.
- ^ a b "Review of A Second Visit to the United States of North America, in the Years 1845-6 by Sir Charles Lyell". The Quarterly Review. 85: 183–224. June 1849.
- ^ Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man at wikisource.
- ^ a b "Review of Life, Letters, and Journals by Sir Charles Lyell, Bart. ed. by his Sister-in-Law, Mrs. Lyell". The Quarterly Review. 153: 96–131. January 1882.
References
- Adams, Frank Dawson (1938). The birth and development of the geological sciences. Baltimore: The Williams And Wilkins Company.
- Babbage, Charles (1838). The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (2nd ed.). London: John Murray.
- Bailey, Sir Edward (1962). Charles Lyell. London: Thomas Nelson.
- Bartholomew, M. (1973). "Lyell and evolution: an account of Lyell's response to the prospect of an evolutionary ancestry for man". The British Journal for the History of Science. 6 (3): 261–303. PMID 11615533.
- Bowler, P.J. (2003). Evolution: the history of an idea (3rd ed.). University of California Press. p. 129. ISBN 0-520-23693-9.
- Browne, E. Janet (2003). Charles Darwin: A Biography. Vol. 2: The power of place. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-11439-0.
- S2CID 84588890.
- Cannon, Walter F. (27 June 1961). "The Impact of Uniformitarianism: Two Letters from John Herschel to Charles Lyell, 1836-1837". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 105 (3). American Philosophical Society: 301–314. JSTOR 985457.
- Desmond, A. (1982). Archetypes and Ancestors: palaeontology in Victorian London\publisher= Blond & Briggs. London.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Hall, Alfred Rupert (1966). The Abbey Scientists. R. & R. Nicholson.
- Hestmark, Geir (2012). "The meaning of 'metamorphic' – Charles & Mary Lyell in Norway, 1837". Norwegian Journal of Geology. 91: 247–275.
- Judd, John Wesley (1910). The Coming of Evolution: The Story of a Great Revolution in Science. Cambridge: The University Press.
- MaComber, Richard W. (1997). "Lyell, Sir Charles, Baronet". The New Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
- Mayr, E. (1982). The growth of biological thought. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-36446-5.
- McPhee, John (1982). Basin and Range. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-70856-6.
- Porter, Roy S. (July 1976). "Charles Lyell and the Principles of the History of Geology". The British Journal for the History of Science. 32 (2): 91–103. S2CID 146595131.
- Ruse, Michael (15 October 1999). The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw. University of Chicago Press. p. 88. ISBN 978-0-226-73169-8.
- Rudwick, Martin J. S. (2010). Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-73130-8.
- Rudwick, Martin J. S. (2014). Earth's Deep History: How It Was Discovered and Why It Matters. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-20409-3.
- Smalley, Ian; Gaudenyi, Tivadar; Jovanovic, Mladen (2015). "Charles Lyell and the loess deposits of the Rhine valley". Quaternary International. 372: 45–50. ISSN 1040-6182.
- Stafford, Robert A. (1989). Scientist of Empire. Cambridge: University Press.
- Taub, Liba (1993). S2CID 144553417.
- Thanukos, Anna (2012). "Uniformitarianism: Charles Lyell". University of California Museum of Paleontology. Retrieved 23 July 2012.
- Lyell, Sir Charles (1970). ISBN 978-0-300-01231-6.
- White, Errol I. (May 1958). "On Cephalaspis lyelli Agassiz". Palaeontology. 1. The Palaeontological Association: 99–105.
- Wilson, Leonard G. (1973). "Charles Lyell". In Gillispie, Charles Coulston (ed.). Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. VIII. Pennsylvania: Charles Scribner's Sons.
- Image source
- Portraits of Honorary Members of the Ipswich Museum (Portfolio of 60 lithographs by T.H. Maguire) (George Ransome, Ipswich 1846–1852)
Further reading
- Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle (1978), a book by Stephen Jay Gould that reassesses Lyell's work
- Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform (2008), a major overview of Lyell's work in its scientific context by Martin J. S. Rudwick
- Principles of Geology: Penguin Classics (1997), the key chapters of Lyell's most famous work with an introduction by James A. Secord
External links
- Media related to Charles Lyell at Wikimedia Commons
- Works by or about Charles Lyell at Wikisource
- Quotations related to Charles Lyell at Wikiquote
- Works by Charles Lyell at Project Gutenberg
- Works by Charles Lyell at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Works by or about Charles Lyell at Internet Archive
- Principles of Geology 1st edition at ESP.
- Principles of Geology (7th edition, 1847) from Linda Hall Library
- Portraits of Charles Lyell at the National Portrait Gallery, London