Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
The first to write about geology was Francis Bacon in Novanum Organum (1620), which noted that the continents fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, though he offered no further explanation.
James Ussher (1581-1656)
In 1650, James Ussher, the Irish Archbishop of Armagh, wrote the Annals of the World, in which he calculated that the earth was created in 4004 BC. He added the lifespan of all the descendants of Adam to calculate the time of creation.
John Woodward (1665-1728)
John Woodward, in Toward a Natural History of the Earth (1695), claimed that the biblical flood leveled the entire earth. As the waters receded, earth masses were thrust upward, creating canyons. The violence of the receding waters created the strata in our present day. Woodward also concluded that fossils are those that died in floods and that extinct animals are not extinct but live at the bottom of the ocean.