John George Children

John George was born on 18 May 1777 at Ferox Hall, Tonbridge, Kent. His father, George Children FRS (1742–1818), a banker, belonged to a family that lived at the home, near Nether Street in Hildenborough; his mother, Susanna, who was the daughter of Rev. Thomas Marshall Jordan of West Farleigh, died six days after he was born. Children studied at Tonbridge School, Eton College and later at Queens' College, Cambridge. In 1798, he married Hester Anna Holwell, granddaughter of John Zephaniah Holwell. After her unexpected passing, in 1800, he began to travel with more regularity. He also established a chemical laboratory at Ferox Hall. He went on to marry another woman, Caroline Wise (daughter of George Furlong Wise of Woolston), in 1809; she also died the following year. In 1812 the collapse of the Tonbridge Bank led to financial problems. In 1816 his father was declared bankrupt. It was then that he found work as a librarian. In 1819, he married Eliza Towers, the two remaining together until her death, twenty years later, in 1839. File:Waterloo_Elm_by_Anna_Children.jpg|The Waterloo Elm prior to being cut down, sketch by Anna, 1818 File:Wellington_chair.jpg|The chair made by Chippendale and presented to the Duke of Wellington He died at Halstead Place, Kent. ==Scientific career==

'' was named after him by Gray. Children was a friend of Sir Humphry Davy and together they conducted several experiments. In 1808 he visited Spain where he met Joseph Blanco White. In 1813 he constructed a large galvanic cell and conducted experiments using them. These were published in Philosophical Transactions in 1815 and for this he received the Royal Institution medal in 1828. Following the bankruptcy of his father, he began to work on a gunpowder business with Davy but this did not last. In 1822, he found a position as an assistant librarian through Lord Camden in the Department of Antiquities at the British Museum when he was appointed assistant keeper of the Natural History Department in succession to William Elford Leach. The appointment, influenced by Sir Humphry Davy, was controversial as he was less qualified than another applicant, William Swainson. After the division of the Department into three sections in 1837 he became keeper of the Department of Zoology, retiring in 1840 and succeeded by his assistant John Edward Gray. After his retirement he took an interest in astronomy. Around 1823-24, there was an interest in silver mining in South America and there was a search for silver extraction techniques that did not need expensive mercury. Children found a process that he sold to several companies including Real del Monte and United Mexicans. the Australian stick insect Tropidoderus childrenii, the North American lady beetle Exochomus childreni as well as a mineral called childrenite. John James Audubon named Sylvia childrenii (or Children's warbler) after him, stating "I have named it after my most esteemed friend, J. G. Children, Esq. of the British Museum, as a tribute of sincere gratitude for the unremitted kindness which he has shewn me" but that is a junior name as the specimen it was based on was of a juvenile of the already described yellow warbler. ==Family==

Children's only daughter (from his first wife Hester Anna) was Anna Atkins, a botanist, who is best known for her book of cyanotype photograms of algae, the first book of exclusively photographic images ever made. She wrote a memoir on the life of her father which included several unpublished poems. ==References==