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- 1862 -1873 (Creation)
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Extent: 1 folder, 11 letters
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Letters from Sir Charles Lyell to William Henry Flower
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Admin History: Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) author of the scientific classic ‘Principles of Geology’. His scientific contributions included an explanation of earthquakes, the theory of gradual "backed up-building" of volcanoes, and in stratigraphy the division of the Tertiary period into the Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene. He also coined the currently-used names for geological eras, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic. Lyell was one of the first to believe that the world is older than 300 million years, on the basis of its geological anomalies. He was a close friend of Charles Darwin, and contributed significantly to Darwin's thinking on the processes involved in evolution. He helped to arrange the simultaneous publication in 1858 of papers by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace on natural selection.