GILBERT, Sir JOSEPH HENRY (1817-91). An English agricultural scientist, born at Hull (Yorkshire). He studied at Glasgow University, University College, London, and at the laboratory of Liebig, University of Giessen, and in 1840-43 was successively assistant to Prof. A. T. Thomp son at University College and chemist to a calico manufactory near Manchester. In 1843 he be came associated with Mr. (later Sir) J. B. Lawes (q.v.) in connection with the agricultural experi ment station established upon the latter's estate at Rothamsted (near Saint Alban's, Hertfordshire). lle was director of the laboratory from 1843 until the death of Lawes in 1900, and from that time director of the station. He was appointed pro fessor of rural economy at Oxford in 1E84 and 1887. In 1860 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1882-83 was president of the Chemical Society, of which lie had been elected a member in 1841. Ile traveled for scientific pur
poses in the United States in 1882, 1884, and 1893. The combined services of himself and Lawes to the development of agricultural chem istry, dating from the establishment of the Rothamsted station, one of the first of such in stitutions, have been epoch-making. In addition to a large number of essays prepared with Lawes for the Journal of the Royal Agricultural So ciety of England, the Journal of the Chemical Society, the Transactions of the Royal Society, and various other periodicals and reports, he wrote: Amount and Composition of the Rain and Drainage Waters at Rothantsted (1882, with Lawes and Warington) ; and Agricultural Investi gations at Rothamsted, England, During a Period of Fifty Years (1895; Bulletin 22 of the United States Official Experiment Station).