Babington, William

(b. Port Glenone, Antrim, Northern Ireland, 21 May 1756; d. London, England, 29 April 1833)

mineralogy, geology.

After apprenticeship to a medical practitioner in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, and completion of his medical training at Guy’s Hospital, London, Babington was appointed assistant surgeon at Haslar Naval Hospital, Portsmouth, in 1777. He became apothecary (1781), assistant physician (1795), and full physician (1802) at Guy’s Hospital, where he also lectured on chemistry. In 1795 he was awarded an M.D. by Aberdeen University. The following year he qualified as licentiate of the College of Physicians, London, and was created fellow of the college by “special grace” in 1827. Also in 1796 he commenced private practice, and was so successful that in 1811 he resigned from Guy’s Hospital. Although prominent as a practicing physician for the rest of his life, Babington made no conspicuous contribution to medical science. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1805.

Babington’s interest in mineralogy arose through the purchase of a cabinet of minerals-the collection of minerals was at that time a fashionable pursuit. His study of these minerals, to which he applied his knowledge of chemistry, led to the publication of his Systematic Arrangement of Minerals (1795). In 1799 he published a greatly enlarged New System of Mineralogy. He classified minerals by the Linnaean system into orders, genera, and species, the main subdivisions being based on chemical composition; crystal form was used only to establish subdivisions. This constituted an advance on the then widely used Wernerian system, which was based principally on external characters.

Babington was a member of the British Mineralogical Society, which was formed in 1799 to carry out analyses of British minerals. Some of the members of the society, including Babington and a few others with scientific inclinations, founded the Geological Society of London on 13 November 1807. As an influential member, Banington played an important part in establishing the new society on a firm basis and in promoting mineralogical and geological science in general. He served as president from 1822 to 1824.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Works by Babington are A Syllabus of a Course of Lectures Read at Guy’s Hospital on Chemistry (London, 1789); A Systematic Arrangement of Minerals, Founded on the Joint Consideration of Their Chemical, Physical, and External Characters, &c. (London, 1795, 2nd ed. 1796); and A New System of Mineralogy in the Form of a Catalogue, &c. (London, 1799).

II. Secondary Literature. See G.B. Greenough, “President’s Anniversary Address, for 1834,” in Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, 2 (1838), 42–44; W. Munk, The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians, II (London, 1878), 451; S. Wilks and G.T. Bettany, A Biographical History of Guy’s Hospital (London, 1892), pp. 199–204; and H. B. Woodward, The History of the Geological Society of London (London, 1907), pp.6–6.

V. A. Eyles