John George Children FRS FRSE FLS PRES (18 May 1777 – 1 January 1852 in Halstead, Kent) was a British chemist, mineralogist and zoologist.

He was a friend of Sir Humphry Davy, who helped him secure a controversial appointment to a post in the British Museum.

Along with Davy he built a large galvanic cell, assisted him in experiments and invented a method to extract silver from ore without the need for mercury.

[1] His father, George Children FRS (1742–1818),[2] 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.

There he noticed that the Waterloo Elm, a tree under which the Duke of Wellington had made his headquarters, was being stripped bare by souvenir-hunters.

Once purchased, he had the tree made into pieces of furniture by Thomas Chippendale at Apsley House and Belvoir Castle.

[9] Children found himself poorly qualified in zoology and depended greatly on John Edward Gray who worked as a day-worker.

Gray's own application to the post that Children held had been passed over due to rivalries with influential members of the Linnean Society.

Children found a process that he sold to several companies including Real del Monte and United Mexicans.

of the British Museum, as a tribute of sincere gratitude for the unremitted kindness which he has shewn me"[13] but that is a junior name as the specimen it was based on was of a juvenile of the already described yellow warbler.