CHILDREN, JOHN GEOROE, was born on the 18th of May 1777, at Ferox Hall, Tonbridge. From the Grammar school of that town he went to Eton, and afterwards, in 1794, entered Queen'e College, Cambridge, as fellow-commoner. Ife studied with a view to the church, but the early death of his wife led him to travel in the south of Europe and in the United States, from whence he returned to devote himself to scientific pursuits.
While studying mineralogy, chemistry, and galvanism, be made the acquaintance of Davy, 'Wollaston, and other leading men of science.
In 1807 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In the following year he contributed a paper to the 'Philosophical Transactions,' on 'Some experiments performed with a view to ascertain the most advantageous method of conatructing a voltaic apparatus, for the purposes of chemical research,' in which ho determined the effect of unusually large battery plates. With twenty pairs of plates each four feet long and two feet wide, he confirmed Davy's observation, "that intensity Increases with the number [of plateej, and the quantity of aleotricity with the extent of the surface." This was followed in 1815 by a paper, published also in the 'Philo sophical Transactions," An account of some experiments with a large voltalo battery,' in which a further series of singularly interesting results was described, among them the conversion of iron into steel by union with diamond, under the sole action of the battery.
Between the dates of these papers Mr. Children travelled in Spain, and visited the quicksilver mines of Almaden, then hut little known in England. In 1816 he was appointed one of the librarian, in the department of Antiquities (afterwards of Natural History) of the British Museum. In 1819 he published a translation of Th6nard's 'Essay on Chemical Analysis.' and in 1822 of Berzelins'a ' Treatise on the Use of the Blowpipe,' with additional experiments and notes. He diseotered a method for extracting silver from its one without amal gamation, and derived considerable profit by selling the right to use it to several South American mining companies in 1824. He helped in establishing the Zoological Journal,' which appeared in 1825, and was one of the first editors. In 1826 he was elected secretary of the Royal Society, and resigning the following year on account of ill health, was re-elected in 1830, and retained the office for aeven years. In 1839, on the death of his third wife, Mr. Children resigned his post at the British Museum. He died on the first day of 1852.