JAMESON, ROBERT Scottish naturalist and mineralogist, was born at Leith on July II, 1774. He became assistant to a surgeon in his native town. He studied natural history under Dr. John Walker in 1792 and 1793, and went in 1800 to Freiberg to study for nearly two years under Werner. In 1804 he succeeded Walker as regius professor of natural his tory in Edinburgh university. He became perhaps the first emi nent exponent in Great Britain of the Wernerian geological system, but was ultimately converted to the views of Hutton. His influ ence in the classroom gave a marked impetus to the study of geology in Britain. His energy also amassed a great part of the splendid collection in the natural history department of the Royal Scottish museum in Edinburgh. In 1819 Jameson, with Sir David Brewster, started the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, and after the loth volume edited it alone, until his death in Edinburgh on April 19, Jameson was the author of Outline of the Mineralogy of the Shetland Islands and of the Island of Arran (1798), incorporated with Miner alogy of the Scottish Isles (1800) ; Mineralogical Description of Scot land, vol. i. pt. i (Dumfries, 1805) ; this was to have been the first of
a series embracing all Scotland ; System of Mineralogy (3 vols., 1804 08 ; 3rd ed., 1820) ; Elements of Geognosy (1809) ; Mineralogical Trav els through the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland Islands (2 vols., 1813) ; and Manual of Mineralogy (1821) ; and occasional papers, of which a list will be found in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, July, 1854, with a portrait and biographical sketch of the author.