Charles Lyell

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Charles Lyell
By Brian Voll and Amy Gefell
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Introduction
He lived from 1789 to 1875 and was born in
England on November 14 He grew up interested in
natural history, especially entomology In 1816
he entered Exeter College in Oxford where he
learned of natural history to eventually become a
geologist In 1819 he was elected a fellow of the
Linnean and Geological Societies where he
published his first works He published many
important works of science, including The
Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man and
Principles of Geology
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Contributions

• Lyell developed the theory of unfomitarianism,
  this theory states that the geological and/or
  biological forces have been working in the same
  way and with the same intensity that they been
  working since the beginning of earth
• An example of unformitarianism would be rain has
  been working the same way for centuries to erode
  the earth
• Uniformitarianism was built upon the idea of
  gradualism by James Hutton, or that the changes
  on earth are a slow ongoing process
• He was the first to incorporate ice ages and an
  old human race into the geologically recent
  history of earth
• There was no specific evidence for Lyells
  theory, it appears that he made the gradualism
  theory by James Hutton and made it more specific.
  He gathered archeological and geological evidence
  to support his views

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Influence
Lyell was strongly influenced by James
Huttons theory of gradualism. He added to the
idea. Lyell disagreed with Jean Lamarck. He
strongly supported and contributed to Darwins
theory of The Origin of Species, evolution.
However, he did not fully accept natural
selection as the driving engine behind evolution.
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