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John Kidd

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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JOHN KIDD (1775-1851), English physician, chemist and geologist, born at Westminster on the 10th of September 1775, was the son of a naval officer, Captain John Kidd. He was educated at Bury St Edmunds and Westminster, and afterwards at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1797 (M.D. in 1804). He also studied at Guy's Hospital, London (1797-1801), where he was a pupil of Sir Astley Cooper. He became reader in chemistry at Oxford in 1801, and in 1803 was elected the first Aldrichian professor of chemistry. He then voluntarily gave courses of lectures on mineralogy and geology: these were delivered in the dark chambers under the Ashmolean Museum, and there J. and W. D. Conybeare, W. Buckland, C. G. B. 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. In 1818 he became a F. R. C. P.; in 1822 regius professor of medicine in succession to Sir Christopher Pegge; and in 1834 he was appointed keeper of the Radcliffe Library. He delivered the Harveian oration before the Royal College of Physicians in 1834. He died at Oxford on the 7th of September 1851.

PUSr,1cATloNs. - Outlines of Mineralogy (2 vols., 1809); A Geologi, cal 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 (Bridgewater Treatise).