Edward William Binney

Edward William Binney FRS (1812–1882) was an English geologist.

Edward William Binney was born in Morton, Nottinghamshire in 1812. He was apprenticed to a solicitor in Chesterfield. In 1836, he went to Manchester. He soon retired from legal practice to study geology.

In 1838, he helped found the Manchester Geological Society. He was elected president in 1857 and again in 1865. He also was the secretary and later the president of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. He studied the Carboniferous and Permian rocks in northern England and the Drift deposits of Lancashire. He and Joseph Dalton Hooker found the first coal balls. They also studied the geology of the country around Manchester. He became an expert on the Coal Measures, and his Observations on the Structure of Fossil Plants found in the Carboniferous Strata (1868–1875) was one of the studies of the Palaeontographical Society. His large collection of fossils was placed in Owens College.

Binney was close friends with James Prescott Joule, William Sturgeon, John Davies and John Leigh.

He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1856 and died in Manchester.

Further reading

• Joule, J. P. (1882). "Edward William Binney, F.R.S, F.G.S." Nature. 25 (639). Macmillan Journals ltd.: 293–294. doi:10.1038/025293a0. S2CID 4083951.
• Kargon, R. H. (1977). Science in Victorian Manchester: Enterprise and Expertise. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-1969-5.
• Secord, A. "Binney, Edward William (1812–1881)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 10 August 2007
• [Anon.] (1911) "Edward William Binney", Encyclopaedia Britannica

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