Babington was born in Ludlow, Shropshire, the son of physician Rev.
Joseph Babington and Cathérine née Whitter, and a nephew of
Thomas Babington Macaulay. When he was four, the family moved to Leicester. At eight he received private tuition at Needwood Parsonage, Staffordshire. He went briefly to
Charterhouse followed by Hutchins's school at Bath. In 1826 he joined
St John's College, Cambridge, obtaining his Bachelor of Arts in 1830 and his Master of Arts in 1833. He attended and took greater interest in the botanical lectures of
John Stevens Henslow. In 1831 he was persuaded to examine the plants of Bath by Mr E. Collings and this resulted in his first work
, Flora Bathonensis published in 1833. He overlapped at Cambridge with
Charles Darwin, and in 1829 they argued over who should have the pick of
beetle specimens from a local dealer. He gained the nickname "Beetles Babington" and helped Darwin identify specimens from the collections he made on the
voyage of the Beagle. He became a member of a Phrenological Society at Cambridge that was created following a lecture by
Johann Gaspar Spurzheim. He obtained the chair of botany at the
University of Cambridge in 1861 and wrote several papers on insects. He married Anna Maria Walker, daughter of Madras civil servant John Walker, on 3 April 1866. Babington was a member of several scientific societies including the
Botanical Society of Edinburgh, the
Linnean Society of London (1853), the
Geological Society of London, the
Royal Society (1851), and in 1833 he participated in the foundation of the
Royal Entomological Society. Babington was President of the
Cambrian Archaeological Association at their meeting at
Church Stretton in 1881 and for many years served as chairman of the council of the association. In 1836 he was a founding member of the Ray Club which became the Ray Society in 1844. He was a founding member of the
Cambridge Antiquarian Society in 1840. He was devoted to evangelical activities and supported organizations like the Church Missionary Society and helped set up a home for orphan girls in Cambridge in 1871. ==References==