John Kidd (chemist)

John Kidd (10 September 1775 – 7 September 1851) was an English physician, chemist and geologist who took a leading role in Oxford's "scientific awakening" in the early years of the nineteenth century.[1]

John Kidd
Born10 September 1775
Westminster, London, England, Great Britain
Died7 September 1851(1851-09-07) (aged 75)
Oxford
NationalityEnglish
Scientific career
FieldsChemistry
Geology

Biography

Kidd was born in Westminster, the son of a naval officer, and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. He became reader in chemistry at Oxford in 1801, and in 1803 was elected the first Aldrichian Professor of Chemistry.[2] He then voluntarily gave courses of lectures on mineralogy and geology. These were delivered in the dark chambers under the Ashmolean Museum, where William Conybeare, William Buckland, Charles Daubeny and others gained their first lessons in geology. Kidd was a popular and instructive lecturer, and through his efforts the geological chair, first held by Buckland, was established.[3]

Kidd's two geological publications — his Outlines of Mineralogy (1809) and Geological Essay on the Imperfect Evidence in Support of a Theory of the Earth (1815) — have been described as providing "the seeds of an Oxford school of geology," characterized by a distinctive emphasis on diluvial theory.[4] In 1818 he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians; in 1822 Regius Professor of Medicine in succession to Sir Christopher Pegge; and in 1834 he was appointed keeper of the Radcliffe Library.

In March 1822 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.[5] In 1830 the president of the Royal Society appointed him as one of the eight authors of the Bridgewater Treatises "on the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Creation."[6][7] His treatise on the "Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man," which was published in 1833, offered "a popular rather than a scientific exposition of facts"[8] and set out to protect readers from materialism and the transmutation of species.[9] Kidd refused to "maintain an argument" about natural theology, addressing himself "exclusively to those who are believers."[10] He delivered the Harveian Oration before the Royal College of Physicians in 1836.

Publications
  • Outlines of Mineralogy (1809)
  • A Geological Essay on the Imperfect Evidence in Support of a Theory of the Earth (1815)
  • On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man (1833). This was the second Bridgewater Treatise.

See also

References
  1. Rupke, N. A. (1997). "Oxford's Scientific Awakening and the Role of Geology". In Brock, M. G.; Curthoys, M.C. (eds.). The History of the University of Oxford VI, Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 543–62. ISBN 978-0-19-951016-0.
  2. The Aldrich chair of Chemistry was founded with an endowment given to the University in 1798 by George Aldrich. (Cf: Robert J P Williams, John S Rowlinson, Allan Chapman (edts.), Chemistry at Oxford: a history from 1600 to 2005, pp. 79-81, London: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2008 (ISBN 0854041397)).
  3. Edmonds, J. M. (1979). "The Founding of the Oxford Readership in Geology, 1818". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. 34 (1): 33–51. doi:10.1098/rsnr.1979.0003. ISSN 0035-9149. JSTOR 531512. S2CID 71771394.
  4. "Kidd, John (1775–1851), physician". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/15511. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 19 September 2022. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  5. "Search Results". catalogues.royalsociety.org. Retrieved 19 September 2022.
  6. Brock, W. H. (1966). "The Selection of the Authors of the Bridgewater Treatises". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. 21 (2): 162–179. doi:10.1098/rsnr.1966.0016. ISSN 0035-9149. JSTOR 531066. S2CID 145411440.
  7. "Authors of the Bridgewater Treatises (act. c. 1833–1836)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/96360. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 19 September 2022. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  8. Kidd, John (1833). On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man: Principally with Reference to the Supply of His Wants, and the Exercise of His Intellectual Faculties. London: W. Pickering. pp. vii.
  9. Topham, Jonathan R. (2022). Reading the Book of Nature: How Eight Best Sellers Reconnected Christianity and the Sciences on the Eve of the Victorian Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-81576-3.
  10. Kidd, John (1833). On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man: Principally with Reference to the Supply of His Wants, and the Exercise of His Intellectual Faculties. London: W. Pickering. pp. viii–ix.
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