Hugh Miller

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Hugh Miller was a towering figure among Victorian Scotland's intellectuals. As the son of a Cromarty fisherman who met his untimely demise at sea when Hugh was just five years old, he had to quickly adapt to a new reality. At sixteen, he began an apprenticeship with a local stonemason, setting the stage for a career that would take him far beyond the rugged coastlines of Scotland. In 1840, Miller launched his journalistic career with a resounding splash in The Witness, a pro-Evangelical newspaper that catapulted him into the limelight. A fierce champion of the new Free Church, he simultaneously pursued groundbreaking research in geology and palaeontology, making crucial contributions to the debate on evolution while steadfastly opposing Darwinian theory in his monumental works Footprints of the Creator (1850) and The Testimony of the Rocks (1857). Tragically, Miller's life was cut short by his own hand in 1856. His wife Lydia left behind an unforgettable testament to their life together.