1816 - entered Exeter College as a fellow-commoner.

1819 - graduated BA with a respectable second class in classical honours.

1821 - graduated MA. Met Gideon Mantell.

1822 - called to the bar.

1823 - elected a secretary of the Geological Society of London.

1824 - joined the new Athenaeum.

1826 - following his father's disapproval, returned to legal work in London and in the west of England.

1827 - read and was fascinated by the evolutionary speculations of Jean Baptiste de Lamarck.

1828 - joined Roderick Murchison for a fieldwork tour on the continent.

1830 - the first volume of Principles of Geology published.

1831 - appointed professor of geology at the new King's College in London.

1832 - the second volume of Principles of Geology published.

1833 - the third and final volume of Principles of Geology published.

1834 - travelled in Scandinavia, becoming convinced that the land around the Baltic had risen insensibly slowly and without earthquakes, even within recorded history.

1835-1837 - served as president of the Geological Society.

1836 - mentored the young Charles Darwin.

1838 - Elements of Geology published.

1845 - following a lecture tour of America, Travels in North America published.

1848 - knighted.

1863 - Antiquity of Man published following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species.

1864 - created a baronet.

1866 - received the Wollaston medal, the Geological Society's highest award.