BBC Online - Local Heroes - Biographies

Charles Lyell 1797-1875

Charles Lyell was born at Kinnordy, north of Dundee, although he grew up in Hampshire and spent most of his adult life travelling the world, looking at rocks, rivers, and volcanoes.

In the 1650s, Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh calculated from the family histories in the Bible that the world was created in October 4004 BC - and his followers would have said that amazing natural wonders like Durdle Door in Dorset were created during that same week. However, scientists like William Buckland were uncovering evidence that the Earth was much older than 6000 years. They reckoned that the great Biblical Flood must have laid down obvious layers of sedimentary rocks; in fact they thought many of the features of the Earth had been shaped by the Flood and other catastrophes. They were called catastrophists.

Charles Lyell gradually became convinced this was wrong, and that all the Earth's features could be explained by processes that are still going on. He set out to persuade the rest of the world.

He grew up at Bartley Lodge in the New Forest. His dad was an enthusiastic observer of beetles and plants, and in the library at Bartley Lodge he read in one of his dad's books that the epochs of geology were of "inconceivable duration." That set him thinking, and he went on observing and thinking as he travelled all over Europe and north America.

Of all the strange features of the world he saw, two were particularly impressive to him - Mt. Etna in Sicily, and the Niagara Falls, on the border between Canada and the United States. Niagara is a fantastic sight - a million gallons of water every second, 160 feet high and two-thirds of a mile wide - well worth a visit if you are anywhere near.