Environmental and Heritage Sciences

Ruskin’s diverse scientific interests reflected the popular fascination with earth sciences in the nineteenth century, during a period of rapid scientific change. His work brought him into contact with preeminent scientists of his time, including Charles Lyell (1797–1875), William Buckland (1784–1856), Henry Acland (1815–1900), and Charles Darwin (1809–1882).

Lecturing students at Oxford in 1872, he claimed: ‘of all writers on art . . . there is no one who appeals so often as I do to physical science’. He participated actively in debates on geology and glaciology, optics and the phenomenon of light, and meteorology and ‘the architecture of the sky’. Many years later, he wrote: ‘I am proud to think that these drawings of mine, done thirty years ago at the foot of the Matterhorn, are entirely right as examples of mountain drawing, with absolutely correct outline of all that is useful for geological science or landscape art’.