James Hutton, Geologist: Hybrid Event

James Hutton's closest friends included Adam Smith and James Watt. They are household names throughout the world, but few apart from geologists would know Hutton. Yet his Theory of the Earth, presented in Edinburgh in 1785, fundamentally changed the way we think about the evolution of the earth and laid the foundation for modern geology. In 2026, the tercentenary of his birth, he deserved to be counted among the titans of the Scottish Enlightenment.