Charles Lyell and the Geological Society

John C. Thackray

doi:10.1144/GSL.SP.1998.143.01.03

Abstract

Charles Lyell was a loyal and committed Fellow of the Geological Society from 1819 until 1875, serving as Secretary, Foreign Secretary and President. He was principally a theorist, his uniformitarian outlook strongly influenced by the work of James Hutton. The Society on the other hand was devoted to the collection and dissemination of facts; on the whole, theorizing was unwelcome. In line with this tradition the papers Lyell read to the Society are largely factual, and do not add a great deal to the ideas put forward in the Principles of Geology. However, his theories were not ignored by the Society, being noticed in the annual presidential address and, more importantly, in the unscripted and largely spontaneous discussions that took place after many of the papers read at the Society’s evening meetings.

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