Dictionary of Scientific Biography

including Hutton's three sisters, quite well-off, and apparently Hutton was never under any pressing need to earn a living. He attended Edinburgh High School and in 1740 entered Edinburgh University as a student of the humanities. He attended the lectures given by John Stevenson on logic and rhetoric and those of the mathematician Colin Maclaurin, which included physics, experimental philosophy, and geography as well as mathematics.

It is said that Hutton enjoyed Maclaurin's lectures particularly, but his biographer John Playfair1 states that it was to Stevenson that Hutton was indebted for his interest in chemistry, as a result of an experiment introduced into a lecture. Little information about chemistry was then available to Hutton, but he retained and developed his interest in the subject throughout his lifetime.

On leaving the university it was apparent that Hutton had an inclination for academic studies, but he was persuaded to follow an occupation more likely to provide a professional career. Consequently, in 1743 he was apprenticed to an Edinburgh lawyer. The routine of a lawyer's office was not to his liking, and he was soon released from his obligations. He then decided to study medicine, the only professional course which ensured that he would learn something more about chemistry. He reentered the university in 1744, and studied medicine there until 1747, probably attending the lectures of Andrew Plummer, professor of medicine and chemistry, who had studied under Boerhaave.

Toward the end of 1747 Hutton went to Paris, where he remained nearly two years. There, according to Playfair, “he pursued with great ardour the studies of chemistry and anatomy.” Because of his interest in chemistry, he probably attended G. F. Rouelle's well-known and popular chemistry course, which also included lectures on mineralogy and geology. Thus it was possibly in Paris that Hutton first became acquainted with geology. Sometime during 1749 Hutton moved to Leiden, where he graduated M.D. in September of that year with a thesis entitled De sanguine et circulatione microcosmi.

After leaving Leiden at the end of 1749 Hutton spent several months in London. About this time he entered into an agreement with James Davie, an Edinburgh friend, to manufacture sal ammoniac from soot, by a method they had jointly discovered before Hutton had left Edinburgh. This undertaking operated successfully for many years and no doubt added to Hutton's income.

Hutton returned to Edinburgh in the summer of 1750. He decided against practicing medicine and chose instead to take up farming as an occupation on the small farm he had inherited from his father at Slighshouses, Berwickshire, forty miles southeast of Edinburgh. Hutton recorded that he became interested in farming some years previously after reading Jethro Tull's well-known book Horse-Hoeing Husbandry. The standard of farming in Scotland at that time was low and because Hutton investigated thoroughly any subject in which he became interested, before settling at Slighshouses he spent about a year (1752-1753) on a farm at Belton, near Yarmouth, in East Anglia, an area in which good farming practice prevailed. While there he made many journeys on foot into other parts of England to study agriculture and he acquired the habit of examining rock outcrops. It was in 1753, according to Playfair, that Hutton first began to study geology. As a student of farming he must have observed that in England soils vary markedly from place to place, and this may have stimulated an interest in the subject.

In 1754 Hutton spent some months traveling in Holland, Belgium, and northern France to improve further his knowledge of agriculture, and again he took the opportunity to add to his knowledge of geology. At the end of that year he moved to Slighshouses, where he spent the next fourteen years farming his land in a more scientific manner than had hitherto been customary in Scotland. So far as is known this period of his life was uneventful, except that he made a journey to northern Scotland in 1764 with his close friend George Clerk of Penicuik2 chiefly to study geology, to which, according to Playfair, Hutton was then giving much attention. Slighshouses was an isolated farmhouse and Hutton must have lacked congenial company, although one friend, Sir John Hall of Dunglass, a man interested in both farming and science, lived in the neighborhood. The future course of Hutton's life suggests that he may have spent much time reading scientific literature, for his interests were never confined solely to geology.

In 1767 Hutton, in association with Clerk and Hall, became a member of the committee of management of a projected canal to join the Forth and Clyde rivers. He continued to take an active part in the work of the committee for some twenty years.

About 1768, after bringing his farm into good condition, Hutton was able to let it. He then moved to Edinburgh, where he spent the rest of his life, living with his unmarried sisters. There was in Edinburgh at that time a Philosophical Society (later incorporated as the Royal Society of Edinburgh). Hutton became a member and read several papers to the society, only one of which was published. Playfair states that in Edinburgh much of Hutton's time was occupied with experimental chemistry; but he published