Playfair, John

John Playfair, (born March 10, 1748, Benvie, Forfarshire, Scot.—died July 20, 1819, Burntisland, Fife), Scottish geologist and mathematician known for his explanation and expansion of ideas on uniformitarianism—the theory that the Earth’s features generally represent a response to former processes similar in kind to processes that are operative today.

A professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, Playfair was the first to propose that a river cuts its own valley and was also the first to recognize the transport role of glaciers. He wrote Elements of Geometry (1795), Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802), and Outlines of Natural Philosophy (1812–16).