How many lay that claim to fame? Or have it bestowed on them? Dunno. Here's one of them.

Publisher's Weekly -

In this engaging account of scientific discovery, Repcheck (an acquiring editor at Norton) aims to elevate the little-known Scottish geologist James Hutton (1726-1797) into the lofty company of Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin, as one who wrested modern science from the "straight jacket of religious orthodoxy." Hutton, claims Repcheck, was the first to propose that the earth was shaped not by a cataclysmic Great Flood, but rather by "the inexorable forces of wind and rain, tides and storms, volcanoes and earthquakes" over a far longer period than the 6,000 years biblical scholars said was the planet's age. Repcheck frames his narrative around Hutton's theory, weaving together the many historical threads that led to this paradigm shift in the conception of geological history.

Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan came into the courtroom and battled out the sticky issue of church and state separation, and at the same time showcased the problem of fundamentalist thinking when it encounters new ideas.

Let me be clear:
every human being is a fundamentalist in some respect. We all have some belief or other which is untouchable.

That is not to say we are excused from honest ree-examination. But it's good to remember that we are all susceptible to being dogmatic at times.

Christian Science Monitor - Between a rock and an old place

But his proposition insulted the mind-set of his era. Virtually all of his contemporaries - including some of the Enlightment scholars - adhered to the young Earth creationism that permeated Christian theology: Rocks were either laid down by Noah's flood or left over from Earth's original creation 6,000 years ago. Field observations that suggested otherwise were ignored or "interpreted" to fit the dogma.

Hutton didn't buy it. Decades of unprecedented chemical analyses and detailed observations convinced him that only great heat and pressure could form rock. Only they had the oomph to uplift such spectacular formations as the Scottish highlands.

In his scientifically disciplined imagination, Hutton saw repeated cycles of land formation, land erosion, rock formation from the eroded material, and subsequent new land formation. He realized that it would take vast time periods for these processes to work. Thus was born a foundational concept of geological science.