Robert JamesonFRSFRSE (11 July 1774 – 19 April 1854) was a Scottishnaturalist andmineralogist.
AsRegius Professor ofNatural History at theUniversity of Edinburgh for fifty years, developing his predecessorJohn Walker's concepts based on mineralogy into geological theories ofNeptunism which held sway into the 1830s. Jameson is notable for his advanced scholarship, and his museum collection. The minerals and fossils collection of the Museum of Edinburgh University became one of the largest in Europe during Jameson's long tenure at the university.
Jameson was born inLeith on 11 July 1774, the son of Catherine Paton (1750–94) and Thomas Jameson (c.1750–1802), a soap manufacturer on Rotten Row (now Water Street).[1] They lived on Sherrif Brae. His early education was spent atLeith Grammar School, after which he became the apprentice of the Leith surgeon John Cheyne (father ofJohn Cheyne), with the aim of going to sea. He made his first trip toShetland to study its geology in 1789, aged only 15, publishing his findings in 1793.[2]
He attended classes at theUniversity of Edinburgh (1792–93), studying medicine,botany,chemistry, andnatural history. His father's brother Robert Jameson, was also a physician and lived with them on Rotten Row.[3]
By 1793, influenced by the Regius Professor of Natural History,John Walker (1731–1803), Jameson abandoned medicine and the idea of being a ship's surgeon, and focused instead on science, particularly geology and mineralogy. It is worth noting that Walker was a presbyterian Minister who had actually combined the Regius Professorship with a period of service asModerator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1790.
In 1793, Jameson was given the responsibility of looking after the University's Natural History Collection. During this time his geological field-work frequently took him to theIsle of Arran, theHebrides, Orkney, theShetland Islands and the Irish mainland. In 1800, he spent a year at the mining academy inFreiberg, Saxony, where he studied under the noted geologistAbraham Gottlob Werner (1749 or 1750–1817).
As an undergraduate, Jameson had several noteworthy classmates at theUniversity of Edinburgh includingRobert Brown,Joseph Black, andThomas Dick.
In 1799 he was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers wereAndrew Coventry,Thomas Charles Hope andAndrew Duncan.[4]
In 1804, Jameson succeededDr Walker as the thirdRegius Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh, a post which he held for fifty years. During this period he became the first eminent exponent in Britain of the Wernerian geological system, orNeptunism, and the acknowledged leader of the Scottish Wernerians, founding theWernerian Natural History Society[5] in 1808 and presiding from 1808 until around 1850, when his health began to decline, together with the fortunes of the Society. Jameson's support for Neptunism, a theory that argued that all rocks had been deposited from a primaeval ocean, initially pitted him againstJames Hutton (1726–1797), a fellow Scot and eminent geologist also based in Edinburgh (but not in the university), who argued for theuniformitariandeistic concept ofPlutonism, that features of the Earth's crust were endlessly recycled in natural processes powered bymagmatic molten rocks.
Later, Jameson was willing to join forces with the proponents of Hutton, in 1826 writing that "the Wernerian geognostical views and method of investigation, combined with the theory of Hutton; the experiments and speculations of Hall; the illustrations of Playfair", had taken root in Edinburgh and spread to give Britain unsurpassed success in geology.[6]
In the April–October 1826 edition of the quarterlyEdinburgh New Philosophical Journal edited by Jameson, an anonymous paper praised "Mr. Lamarck, one of the most sagacious naturalists of our day" for having "expressed himself in the most unambiguous manner. He admits, on the one hand, the existence of the simplest infusory animals; on the other, the existence of the simplest worms, by means of spontaneous generation, that is, by an aggregation process of animal elements; and maintains, that all other animals, by the operation of external circumstances, are evolved from these in a double series, and in a gradual manner."[7] – this was the first use of the word "evolved" in a modern sense,[8] and was the first significant statement to relateLamarckism to the geological record of living organisms of the past.[9] Attribution has been disputed, the concepts point to Jameson as the author, combining the directional geological history of Earth proposed by Neptunism with progressive transformism (transmutation of species) shown by fossils. It is possible that the article was written by one of his students,Ami Boué orRobert Edmond Grant.[10][11] Jameson's references to the Deluge in notes to his translation ofGeorges Cuvier'sEssay on the Theory of the Earth had done much to fosterCatastrophism, but his 1827 edition referred to a "succession of variations" caused by environmental conditions having "gradually conducted the classes of aquatic animals to their present state".[10][12] and a later chapter described how "like the formation of rocks, we observe a regular succession of organic formations, the later always descending from the earlier, down to the present inhabitants of the earth, and to the last created being who was to exercise dominion over them", summarising elements of the ideas ofGiambattista Brocchi.[12][13]
As a teacher, Jameson had a mixed reputation for imparting enthusiasm to his students.Thomas Carlyle, who gave serious attention to Natural History, described Jameson's lecturing style as a "blizzard of facts".Charles Darwin attended Robert Jameson's natural history course at the University of Edinburgh in Darwin's teenage years. Darwin found the lectures boring, saying that they determined him "never to attend to the study of geology". The detailed syllabus of Jameson's lectures, as drawn up by him in 1826, shows the range of his teaching. The course in zoology began with a consideration of the natural history of human beings, and concluded with lectures on the philosophy of zoology, in which the first subject wasOrigin of the Species of Animals. (The Scotsman, 29 October 1935: p. 8).
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 theBritish Museum. Shortly after his death, the University Museum was transferred to theBritish Crown and became part of the Royal Scottish Museum, now theRoyal Museum, in Edinburgh's Chambers Street. He was also a prolific author of scientific papers and books, including theMineralogy of the Scottish Isles (1800), hisSystem of Mineralogy (1804), which ran to three editions, andManual of Mineralogy (1821). In 1819, with SirDavid Brewster (1781–1868), Jameson started theEdinburgh Philosophical Journal[14] and became its sole editor in 1824.
He died at his home, 21 Royal Circus inEdinburgh,[15] on 19 April 1854 after two years of illness, and was interred atWarriston Cemetery.[16] He lies on the north side of the main east–west path near the old East Gate. He was succeeded in his post at Edinburgh University by ProfEdward Forbes.
A portrait of Robert Jameson is housed by theNational Portrait Gallery in London,[17] and a bust of him is in the Old College of theUniversity of Edinburgh.
Jameson never married and had no children.
He was the uncle ofRobert William Jameson, Writer to the Signet and playwright ofEdinburgh, and therefore also the great-uncle of SirLeander Starr Jameson, Bt, KCMG, British colonial statesman.
His sister Janet Jameson (1776-1853) married Patrick Torrie (1763-1810). They were parents toThomas Jameson TorrieFRSE a geologist.[18]
A further nephew wasWilliam JamesonFRSE who rose to fame in India.
Aspecies ofvenomous snake,Dendroaspis jamesoni, is named in honor of Robert Jameson.[19]
A geological landmark in Newfoundland, Canada is named in his honour - Jameson Hills - named by a former student of his Wm. Eppes Cormack - the first European to traverse the interior of the island of Newfoundland
