James Hutton

James Hutton FRSE (3 June 1726 OS (14 June 1726 NS) – 26 March 1797) was a Scottish geologist, physician, chemical manufacturer, naturalist, and experimental agriculturalist. He is credited as being the originator of uniformitarianism—one of the fundamental principles of geology—which explains the features of the Earth’s crust by means of natural processes over geologic time. Hutton's work established geology as a proper science, and thus he is often referred to as the "Father of Modern Geology".^[2][3]

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James Hutton