Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, FRS (14 November 1797 – 22 February 1875) was a Scottish geologist who popularised the revolutionary work of James Hutton. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which presented uniformitarianism–the idea that the Earth was shaped by the same scientific processes still in operation today–to the broad general public. Principles of Geology also challenged theories popularised by Georges Cuvier, which were the most accepted and circulated ideas about geology in Europe at the time.[1]