Robert Jameson

Professor Robert Jameson (1774-1854) was a Scottish naturalist and mineralogist, born in Leith, near Edinburgh, in July 1774. As Regius Professor at the University of Edinburgh for fifty years, Jameson is notable for his advanced scholarship in natural history, his superb museum collection, and his tuition of Charles Darwin. Darwin attended Robert Jameson's natural history course at the University of Edinburgh in his teenage years, learning about stratigraphic geology and assisting with the collections of the Museum of Edinburgh University, then one of the largest in Europe. At Professor Robert Jameson's Wernerian Natural History Association, the young Charles Darwin saw John James Audubon give a demonstration of his method of using wires to prop up birds to draw or paint them in natural positions. Robert Jameson was also the great-uncle of Sir Leander Starr Jameson, Bt, KCMG, CB, British colonial statesman.

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Early life

Robert Jameson's early education was spent in Edinburgh, after which he became the apprentice of a surgeon in Leith, with the aim of going to sea. He also attended classes at the Edinburgh University, studying medicine, botany, chemistry, and natural history. By 1793, influenced by the Professor of Natural History, John Walker (1731-1803), he had abandoned medicine and the idea of being a ship's surgeon, and focused instead on science, particularly geology and mineralogy.

Jameson was, as a result of this new focus, given the responsibility of looking after the University's Natural History Collection. During this time his geological field-work frequently took him to the Isle of Arran, the Hebrides, the Orkney and Shetland Islands and the Irish mainland. In 1800, he spent a year at the mining academy in Freiberg, Saxony, where he studied under the noted geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749 or 1750-1817).

As an undergraduate, Jameson had several noteworthy classmates at the University of Edinburgh including Robert Brown, Joseph Black, and Thomas Dick.

Regius Professor, Natural History, University of Edinburgh

In 1804 he succeeded Dr Walker as the third Regius Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University, a post which he held for fifty years. During this period he became the first eminent exponent in Britain of the Wernerian geological system, or Neptunism, and the acknowledged leader of the Scottish Wernerians, founding and presiding over the Wernerian Natural History Society [1] in 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 against James Hutton (1726-1797), a fellow Scot and eminent geologist also based at Edinburgh University, who argued for uniformitarianism, a theory that saw the features of the earth's crust being caused by natural processes over geologic time. Later on in life Jameson renounced Neptunism when he found it untenable and converted to the views of his opponent, Hutton.

As a teacher, Jameson was remarkable for his power of imparting enthusiasm to his students, and from his class-room there radiated an influence which gave a marked impetus to the study of geology in Britain. Though Charles Darwin apparently found the lectures boring, possibly on account of his youth (Darwin was then only 16: Jameson was 52, and had been a professor for 22 years) the course nevertheless introduced Darwin to the study of geology. The detailed syllabus of Professor 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 was Origin of the Species of Animals. (The Scotsman, 29th Oct., 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 the British Museum. Shortly after his death, the University Museum was transferred to the British Crown and became part of the Royal Scottish Museum, now the Royal Museum, in Edinburgh's Chambers Street. He was also a prolific author of scientific papers and books, including the Mineralogy of the Scottish Isles (1800), his System of Mineralogy (1808), which ran to three editions, and Manual of Mineralogy (1821). In 1819, with Sir David Brewster (1781 - 1868), Jameson started the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal [2] and became its sole editor in 1824.

He died in Edinburgh on 19 April 1854. A portrait of Robert Jameson is housed by the National Portrait Gallery in London, and a bust of him is in the Old College of the University of Edinburgh. Robert Jameson was the uncle of Robert William Jameson, Writer to the Signet and playwright of Edinburgh, and therefore also the great-uncle of Sir Leander Starr Jameson, Bt, KCMG, British colonial statesman.

Publications

JAMESON, Professor Robert, James Wilson, and Hugh Murray, (1830) 'Narrative of Discovery and Adventure in Africa, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time: with illustrations of the geology, mineralogy, and zoology'. With a map; plans of the routes of Park, and of Denham and Clapperton; several engravings. First published in the Edinburgh Cabinet Library, 1830.

JAMESON, Robert, (1798) The Mineralogy of the Shetland Islands and of Arran.

JAMESON, Robert, (1800) Mineralogy of the Scottish Isles.

JAMESON, Professor Robert, (1804) System of Mineralogy.

JAMESON, Professor Robert, (1805) Mineralogical Description of Scotland, vol. i, part I.

JAMESON, Professor Robert, (1809) Elements of Geognosy.

JAMESON, Professor Robert, (1813) Mineralogical Travels through the Hebrides, Orkeny and Shetland Islands.

JAMESON, Professor Robert, (1821) Manual of Mineralogy.

Sources: Biographical History

Dictionary of Scientific Biography, volume II , ( New York, Scribner's, 1981)

Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol 12, ( London, William Benton, 1964)

Birse, Ronald M, Science at the University of Edinburgh 1583-1993, (Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh, 1994)

Devlin-Thorp, Sheila, Scotland's Cultural Heritage, (Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh, 1981)

Gillispie, Charles Clouston(ed), Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol vii, (New York, Scribner's, 1972)

Grant, Alexander, The Story of the University of Edinburgh During its First 300 Years, vol.2, (London, Longmans, Green & Co, 1884)

Seymour Fort, G. (1918) Dr Jameson. London: Hurst and Blackett, Ltd., Paternoster House, E.C. - Biography of Sir Leander Starr Jameson, which notes that Starr's '...chief Gamaliel, however, was a Professor Grant, a man of advanced age, who had been a pupil of his great-uncle, the Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh.' (p.53).

Williams, TI and Lee, Sidney(eds), Dictionary of National Biography, vol x, (London, Smith, Elder & Co, 1908)

[See University of Edinburgh Library Special Collections Division: Robert Jameson's Papers; Sources of Biographical History are derived from the University of Edinburgh webpages [3].