After studying law, physics and natural history, in 1791 he was appointed to a diplomatic post by Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg.
In the words of Victor R. Baker, "...Lyell used the understanding of present-day causes to interpret the deep past — a principle termed actualism.
Rudwick [in Worlds Before Adam] explains that Lyell's excellent descriptions ... derived from an original listing by the eighteenth-century German scholar Karl Ernst Adolf von Hoff.
— from "Geological history turned upside down" a book review of Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform, by Martin J. S. Rudwick, in Nature, Published: 23 July 2008
Karl Ernst Adolf von Hoff found his final resting place on the Gothaer Cemetery I also called Alter Gottesacker.