In 1804, Jameson succeeded
Dr Walker as the third
Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh, 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 the
Wernerian Natural History Society in 1808 and presiding from 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 in Edinburgh (but not in the university), who argued for the
uniformitarian deistic concept of
Plutonism, that features of the Earth's crust were endlessly recycled in natural processes powered by
magmatic molten rocks. Later, Jameson was willing to join forces with the proponents of Hutton, in 1826 writing that "the Wernerian geognostical views and method of investigation, combined with the theory of Hutton; the experiments and speculations of Hall; the illustrations of Playfair", had taken root in Edinburgh and spread to give Britain unsurpassed success in geology. In the April–October 1826 edition of the quarterly
Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal edited by Jameson, an anonymous paper praised "Mr. Lamarck, one of the most sagacious naturalists of our day" for having "expressed himself in the most unambiguous manner. He admits, on the one hand, the existence of the simplest infusory animals; on the other, the existence of the simplest worms, by means of spontaneous generation, that is, by an aggregation process of animal elements; and maintains, that all other animals, by the operation of external circumstances, are evolved from these in a double series, and in a gradual manner." – this was the first use of the word "evolved" in a modern sense, and was the first significant statement to relate
Lamarckism to the geological record of living organisms of the past. Attribution has been disputed, the concepts point to Jameson as the author, combining the directional geological history of Earth proposed by Neptunism with progressive transformism (
transmutation of species) shown by fossils. It is possible that the article was written by one of his students,
Ami Boué or
Robert Edmond Grant. Jameson's references to the Deluge in notes to his translation of
Georges Cuvier's
Essay on the Theory of the Earth had done much to foster
Catastrophism, but his 1827 edition referred to a "succession of variations" caused by environmental conditions having "gradually conducted the classes of aquatic animals to their present state". and a later chapter described how "like the formation of rocks, we observe a regular succession of organic formations, the later always descending from the earlier, down to the present inhabitants of the earth, and to the last created being who was to exercise dominion over them", summarising elements of the ideas of
Giambattista Brocchi. As a teacher, Jameson had a mixed reputation for imparting enthusiasm to his students.
Thomas Carlyle, who gave serious attention to Natural History, described Jameson's lecturing style as a "blizzard of facts".
Charles Darwin attended Robert Jameson's natural history course at the University of Edinburgh in Darwin's teenage years. Darwin found the lectures boring, saying that they determined him "never to attend to the study of geology". The detailed syllabus of 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, 29 October 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 (1804), which ran to three editions, and
Manual of Mineralogy (1821). In 1819, with Sir
David Brewster (1781–1868), Jameson started the
Edinburgh Philosophical Journal and became its sole editor in 1824. He died at his home, 21 Royal Circus in
Edinburgh, on 19 April 1854 after two years of illness, and was interred at
Warriston Cemetery. He lies on the north side of the main east–west path near the old East Gate. He was succeeded in his post at Edinburgh University by Prof
Edward Forbes. ==Publications==