Sir James Hall (January 17, 1761 – June 23, 1832) was a Scottish geologist and geophysicist, born at Dunglass, Scotland. He was President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and author of various works on architecture and the sciences. He was impressed with James Hutton's 'Theory of the Earth' (1788) and performed numerous chemical experiments in support of Hutton. The four contributions in this epub were published in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1790 to 1826.
Although chemical experiments on rocks and minerals did not originate with Hall, his work is nevertheless important in the history of the geological sciences because he was the first to use conditions analogous to the temperatures and pressures prevailing in deep subsurface environments where igneous and other types of rocks originate or are modified. Because of this he is considered as the founder of high T/P experimental petrology, a field essential to understanding rocks that have undergone high temperatures and pressures as a result of deep burial.
Although this epub is more technical than is common in MobilRead, I decided to place it here because is belongs in the series with my other epubs on the history of geology. It might also be of general interest to those involved in the history of sciences because it demonstrates the advanced nature of some of the research in Britain in the early 1800s.
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