Frontispiece Volume II of the \Life Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, BART\" John Murray publishers 1881. Engraving by Stoddart from a photograph. Sir Charles Lyell (14th November 1797-22 February 1875). Lyell began his career as a lawyer, but abandoned law in 1827 in favour of geology. He became famous for his three volume \"Principles of Geology\" (1830-1833) which proposed a uniformitarian view of geology as Hutton had before him. He believed geological processes were mostly gradual and ongoing, such that the present can be a guide to the past. His work had a great impact on Charles Darwin who believed he was taking this concept of gradual change into biology. Charles Lyell opposed evolution (transmutation) but was a sympathetic ear and partial convert to Darwinism later in life. In 1863 he published his influential, \"Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man\"."