Born into considerable wealth, Sir James Hall attended the Elin's Military Academy in Kensington and became a baron by age fifteen. He spent several years traveling and attending various universities, including Christ's College in Cambridge, England, and Edinburgh University. While in college he was only mildly interested in geology and chemistry, but during three years of travel and visits to volcanoes in Italy, the Lipari Islands, and Sicily his interest in these subjects grew.

Upon his return to Scotland, Hall began serious studies in chemistry but expressed only slight interest in geology, until he met James Hutton and read the famous geologist's Theory of the Earth. Hutton asserted that the chief cause of geological formations was the planet's internal heat, as demonstrated by volcanoes. The prevailing view of the day was that of the Neptunists who asserted that all types of rocks, even basalt and granite, were laid...