In the 1650s, an Irish archbishop named James Ussher (1581–1656) attempted to work out the date of ‘creation’ as described in the Bible.

As prehistoric bones were unearthed, some Victorians wondered about the timeline of creation and the nature of God.

James Hutton (1726-97), Geologist Since the ... that the date of world creation could be pinpointed to 4004BC. That belief was never questioned until James Hutton, ...

James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh from 1625 to 1665, and a keen scholar, aimed to complete a history of the world from Creation to AD 70. ... James Hutton, the great geologist ...

Hutton, as painted by Sir Henry Raeburn in 1776. National Galleries of Scotland On a June afternoon in 1788, James Hutton stood before a rock outcropping on Scotland’s western coast named Siccar ...

Hutton was not of course the first to challenge the Biblical version of Creation ... James Hutton: The Genius of Time, by Ray Perman, Birlinn, 290pp, £25. Related topics: Edinburgh Scotland.

Of course, if Hutton père had had the decency to die when the boy was in infancy, James Junior might have gone on to become a genius too. But c’est la vie, as the French say. It is the life.

The James Hutton Institute is named after him because he was an acknowledged innovator, thinker and his areas of science mapped so well to our work. We are one of the biggest independent ...