Leonard Horner

Leonard Horner was born one of six children, in George Square, Edinburgh on January 1785. In his second year at Edinburgh University, Horner was fired with an interest in Chemistry, in particular, Mineralogy, and from this there developed a lifelong interest in Geology. On leaving University, however, Horner joined his father's linen bleaching and merchants business. In 1804, he moved with the family to London, where he married and had a family of six daughters.

In London, Horner began to indulge his interest in Geology, becoming one of the founder members of the Geological Society. He was also awarded a fellowship of the Royal Society of London. When he arrived back in Edinburgh ten years later, he was steeped in the society of the educated, enlightened literati. In tune with their liberal philosophy, he began to develop an interest in the social conditions of the working classes, and particularly in their education.

Scottish geologist, brother of political economist Francis Horner, was born in Edinburgh on the 17th of January 1785. His father, John Homer, was a linen merchant in Edinburgh, and Leonard, the third and youngest son, entered the University of Edinburgh in 1799. There in the course of the next four years he studied chemistry and mineralogy, and gained a love of geology from John Playfair's Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory. At the age of nineteen he became a partner in a branch of his father's business, and went to London. In 1808 he joined the newly formed Geological Society and two years later was elected one of the secretaries. Throughout his long life he was ardently devoted to the welfare of the society; he was elected president in 1846 and again in 1860. In 1811 he read his first paper "On the Mineralogy of the Malvern Hills" (Trans. Geol. Soc. vol. I) and subsequently communicated other papers on the "Brine-springs at Droitwich", and the "Geology of the S.W. part of Somersetshire." He was elected F.R.S. in 1813. In 1815 he returned to Edinburgh to take personal superintendence of his business, and while there (1821) he was instrumental in founding the Edinburgh School of Arts for the instruction of mechanics, and he was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Academy. In 1827 he was invited to London to become warden of the London University, an office which he held for four years; he then resided at Bonn for two years and pursued the study of minerals and rocks, communicating to the Geological Society on his return a paper on the "Geology of the Environs of Bonn", and another "On the Quantity of Solid Matter suspended in the Water of the Rhine." In 1833 he was appointed one of the commissioners to inquire into the employment of children in the factories of Great Britain, and he was subsequently selected as one of the inspectors. In later years he devoted much attention to the geological history of the alluvial lands of Egypt; and in 1843 he published his Life of his brother Francis. He died in London on the 5th of March 1864. See the Memoir of Leonard Homer, by Katherine M. Lyell (1890, privately printed).

Other References

• Waterston, Charles D; Macmillan Shearer, A (July 2006). Biographical index of former fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1783-2002: Biographical Index. I. Edinburgh: The Royal Society of Edinburgh. ISBN 978-0-902198-84-5. page 457
• Wikipedia contributors, "Leonard Horner", Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
• Hogg, Bruce; Freemasons and the Royal Society ed 2; Library and Museum of Freemasonry; January 2012; page 62