Adam Sedgewick was a British geologist and Anglican priest, one of the founders of modern geology.
Mary Anning was an English fossil collector, dealer and palaeontologist who became known around the world for the discoveries she made in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset in Southwest England. Anning's findings contributed to changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the earth.
Her discoveries included the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton when she was twelve years old; the first two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces, and she also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods.
Theodor von Bunsen was a German diplomat and member of the Reichstag.
Charles Kingsley was a broad church priest of the Church of England, a university professor, social reformer, historian, novelist and poet. He is particularly associated with Christian socialism, the working men's college and forming labour cooperatives, which encouraged later working reforms.
Kingsley received letters from Thomas Huxley in 1860, and sent letters in 1863 discussing Huxley's early ideas on agnosticism.
He was sympathetic to the idea of evolution and was one of the first to welcome Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species.