Robert Jameson

Robert Jameson, (1774-1854), Scottish naturalist and mineralogist, was born in Leith in July 1774. His early education was spent in Edinburgh, after which he became the apprentice of a surgeon in Leith, with the aim of going to sea. He also attended classes at the Edinburgh University, studying medicine, botany, chemistry, and natural history. By 1793, and influenced by the Professor of Natural History, John Walker (1731-1803), he had abandoned medicine and the idea of being a ship's surgeon, and focused instead on science, particularly geology and mineralogy. Jameson was, as a result of this new focus, given the responsibility of looking after the University's Natural History Collection. During this time his geological field-work frequently took him to the Isle of Arran, the Hebrides, the Orkney and Shetland Islands and the Irish mainland. In 1800, he spent a year at the mining academy in Freiberg, Saxony, where he studied under the noted geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749 or 1750 - 1817).

In 1803 he succeeded Dr Walker as the third Regius Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University, a post which he held for fifty years. During this period he became the first eminent exponent in Britain of the Wernerian geological system, or Neptunism, and the acknowledged leader of the Scottish Wernerians, founding and presiding over the Wernerian Natural History Society in 1808 till his death in 1854. His support for Neptunism, a theory that argued that all rocks had been deposited from a primaeval ocean, pitted him against James Hutton (1726-1797), a fellow Scot and eminent geologist also based at Edinburgh University, who argued for uniformitarianism, a theory that saw the features of the earth's crust being caused by natural processes over geologic time. Later on in life he renounced Neptunism when he found it untenable and converted to the views of his opponent, Hutton.

As a teacher, Jameson was remarkable for his power of imparting enthusiasm to his students, and from his class-room there radiated an influence which gave a marked impetus to the study of geology in Britain. Though Charles Darwin apparently found the lectures rather boring, the course introduced him to the study of geology. Over Jameson's fifty year tenure, he built up a huge collection of mineralogical and geological specimens for the Museum of Edinburgh University, including fossils, birds and insects. By 1852 there were over 74,000 zoological and geological specimens at the museum, and in Britain the natural history collection was second only to that of the British Museum. Shortly after his death, the University Museum was transferred to the British Crown and became part of the Royal Scottish Museum (now the Royal Museum) in Edinburgh's Chambers Street. He was also a prolific author of scientific papers and books, including the Mineralogy of the Scottish Isles (1800), his System of Mineralogy (1808), which ran to three editions, and Manual of Mineralogy (1821). In 1819, with Sir David Brewster (1781 - 1868), Jameson started the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal and became its sole editor in 1824. He died in Edinburgh on 19 April 1854.