Jameson, Robert, 1774-1854

Scots physician and mineralogist.

Scottish naturalist.

Robert Jameson was a British mineralogist. In 1804 he was appointed regius professor of natural history and keeper of the university museum at Edinburgh.

Born in Leith, Scotland, in 1774, Robert Jameson was a pillar of the scientific establishment at the University of Edinburgh and one of Scotland's most important mineralogists and natural historians. While studying medicine at Edinburgh, Jameson acquired a taste for natural history, and changed his course in life. After assisting the professor of natural history John Walker for a period, Jameson decided to further his education by doing advanced study at the renowned Bergakademie in Freiberg, and shortly after receiving his degree in 1802, he returned to Edinburgh to assume the position vacated by Walker's death.

For nearly half a century, Jameson figured as one of the most influential educators at Edinburgh, a tenure marked by a distinguished record of scholarship in mineralogy and mineralogical exploration of his native Scotland. For some time, Jameson enjoyed the unusual distinction of being a Scottish disciple of Abraham Gottlob Werner's neptunian system of geology, pitting him against his fellow Scot James Hutton's uniformitarianism. Eventually, however, Jameson came around to renouncing Werner.

Jameson's major publications included A System of Mineralogy (Edinburgh, 1816), Mineralogy of the Scottish Isles (1800), Elements of Geognosy (1809); Mineralogical Travels through the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland Islands (1813); and Manual of Mineralogy (1821). With David Brewster, he was a founder of the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, anf for thirty years was its sole editor. His mineralogical collections now form the core of the Royal Scottish Museum.