James Hutton, sometimes called the father of modern geology, did not set out to be a scientist. Hutton was the son of Edinburgh's city treasurer, William Hutton and Sarah Balfour. (Aronson). William Hutton was a wealthy man, who was not only the city treasurer, but also owned two farms. (O'Connor and Robertson). When his father died when James was still a young child, his mother took over the supervision of his education. (Aronson). Sarah never remarried, but chose to raise James and his sisters as a single mother. At age 10, James entered Edinburgh High School, where he studied Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Hutton began his formal university education at 14, and was initially drawn to the study of chemistry and philosophy. (Aronson). Hutton completed his initial university education at 17. (O'Connor and Robertson). Hutton then studied medicine and chemistry at the Universities of Edinburgh, Paris, and Leiden, in the Netherlands. (Mathez). Hutton also tried an apprenticeship in law, but decided to attend medical school instead. (Aronson). Hutton then spent 14 years as a farmer. While a farmer, Hutton began to notice things like wind and weather and began to concentrate his powers of observation on the effects of those natural phenomenons on the earth. He concluded that farmland was constantly being eroded because of atmospheric conditions. .

             Hutton began studying rock formations in his thirties. While working as a "gentleman farmer" in Berwickshire, Hutton became fascinated with the rock formations around him. (Wikipedia). The actual formation that inspired Hutton to begin theorizing about geology was at Glen Tilt in the Cairngorm Mountains of the Scottish Highlands. (Wikipedia). There, Hutton noticed granite that had penetrated metamorphic schists, in a manner indicating that the granite had been molten at the time of penetrations. (Wikipedia). This observation taught Hutton two things: granite formed from cooling molten rock and was not precipitated out of water, and the granite at Glen Tilt was younger than the schists.