LYELL, SIR CHARLES (1797-1875), British geologist, son of Charles Lyell of Kinnordy, Forfarshire, was born on Nov. 14, on the family estate in Scotland. His father (1767-1849) was known both as a botanist and as the translator of the Vita Nuova and the Convito of Dante : the plant Lyellia was named after him. As a boy Lye11 had a strong inclination for natural history, especially entomology. In 1816 he entered Exeter college, Oxford, where the lectures of Dr. Buckland first attracted him to geology. After graduating he entered Lincoln's Inn, and in 1825 he was called to the bar, and went on the western circuit for two years. In 1819 he had been elected a fellow of the Linnean and Geological societies, communicating his first paper, "On a Recent Formation of Freshwater Limestone in Forfarshire," to the latter society in 1822, and acting as one of the honorary secre taries in 1823. In that year he went to France, and in 1824 made a geological tour in Scotland in company with Dr. Buckland. In 1826 he was elected F.R.S., and in 1827 he finally abandoned law for geology.
He had already begun to plan his chief work, The Principles of Geology (3 vols., 183o-33). With Murchison he wrote joint papers on the volcanic district of Auvergne and the Tertiary form ations of Aix-en-Provence. He then studied the marine remains of the Italian Tertiary strata, and conceived the idea of dividing this geological system into three or four groups, characterized by the proportion of recent to extinct species of shells. To these groups, after consulting Dr. Whewell as to the best nomenclature, he gave the names now universally adopted—Eocene (dawn of recent), Miocene (less of recent), and Pliocene (more of recent); and with the assistance of G. P. Deshayes he drew up a table of shells in illustration of this classification. Between 1830 and 1876 12 editions of The Principles of Geology were published, each so much enriched as to form a complete history of the progress of geology during that interval.
In 1838 Lye11 published the Elements of Geology, which be came a standard work on stratigraphical and palaeontological geology. This book, which was based on lectures, went through six editions in Lyell's lifetime. In his third great work, The Antiq uity of Man (1863), he gave a general survey of the arguments for man's early appearance on the earth, derived from the discov eries of flint implements in post-Pliocene strata in the Somme valley and elsewhere; he discussed also the deposits of the Glacial epoch, and in the same volume he first gave in his adhesion to Darwin's theory of the origin of species.
In 1833 Lyell married Mary (1809-1873), eldest daughter of Leonard Horner, who was thenceforward associated with him in all his work.
In 1834 Lye11 went to Denmark and Sweden, the result of which was his Bakerian lecture to the Royal Society "On the Proofs of the gradual Rising of Land in certain Parts of Sweden." He also brought before the Geological Society a paper "On the Cretaceous and Tertiary Strata of Seeland and Moen." In 1835 he became president of the Geological Society. In 1837 he was again in Nor way and Denmark, and in 1841 travelled through the United States, Canada and Nova Scotia. This last journey, together with a second one to America in 1845, resulted not only in papers, but also in two works not exclusively geological, Travels in North America (1845) and A Second Visit to the United States He estimated the rate of recession of the falls of Niagara, the annual average accumulation of alluvial matter in the delta of the Mississippi, and studied those vegetable accumulations in the "Great Dismal Swamp" of Virginia, which he afterwards used in illustrating the formation of beds of coal. He also studied the coal-formations in Nova Scotia, and discovered, in company with Dr. (afterwards Sir J. W.) Dawson (q.v.) of Montreal, the earliest known landshell, Pupa vetusta, in the hollow stem of a Sigillaria. On a visit to Madeira and Teneriffe he accumulated evidence on the age and deposition of lava-beds and the formation of volcanic cones. He revisited Sicily in 1858, and his observations upon the structure of Etna refuted the theory of "craters of elevation" upheld by Von Buch and Elie de Beaumont. (See Phil. Trans., 5859.) Lye11 was knighted in 1848 and created a baronet in 1864, in which year he was president of the British Association at Bath.
In later life he became blind. He died on Feb. 22, 1875, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
See Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart., edited by his sister-in-law, Mrs. Lyell (2 vols., 1880 ; Charles Lyell and Modern Geology, by T. G. Bonney (1895).