George Steuart Mackenzie

Sir George Steuart Mackenzie, 7th Baronet FRS FRSE FSA (1780–1848) was a Scottish geologist, chemist and agricultural improver.

The only son of Major General Sir Alexander Mackenzie of Coul (d.1796), a General in the Bengal Army, by his wife Katharine Ramsay (d.1806), daughter of Robert Ramsay of Camno, he was born on 22 June 1780. He was tutored privately then spent one year at Edinburgh's High School (1795/6). He then studied Sciences at Edinburgh University.

He succeeded to the baronetcy aged only 16, on the death of his father in 1796. He first became known to the scientific world in 1800, when he claimed a proof of the identity of diamond with carbon by a series of experiments on the formation of steel by the combination of diamonds with iron; in these experiments he is said to have made free use of his mother's jewels. In 1799 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Sir James Hall, John Playfair and Thomas Charles Hope. He served as Vice President of the Society 1844 to 1848. In 1815, sixteen years after his fellowship of the Edinburgh Society, he was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. He was also President of the Caledonian Horticultural Society.

Pupil and friend of Robert Jameson, Mackenzie devoted much time to the study of mineralogy and geology. His interest in those subjects led him in 1810 to undertake a journey to Iceland, when he was accompanied by Henry Holland and Dr. Richard Bright. To illustrate the conclusions he had formed with regard to the geology of Iceland, Mackenzie visited the Faroe Islands in 1812, and on his return read an account of his observations before the Edinburgh Royal Society.

Mackenzie died at his home, Kinellan House, in western Edinburgh, on 26 October 1848. His home is now subdivided as flats.

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