William Benjamin Carpenter CB FRS (29 October 1813 – 19 November 1885)[1][2] was an English physician, invertebrate zoologist, and physiologist.

He died on 19 November 1885 in London, having suffered burns when the fire heating a vapour bath he was taking was accidentally upset.

He was credited with having a gift of ready speech and luminous interpretation that placed him in the front rank of exponents, at a time when the popularisation of science was in its infancy.

[7] He worked hard as investigator, author, editor, demonstrator and lecturer throughout his life; but it was his researches in marine zoology, notably in the lower organisms, as foraminifera and crinoids, that were most valuable.

[9] Based on the context of the time, including the development of underwater telegraphy,[8] Carpenter was the main architect in convincing both the Admiralty and the British government to undertake a large-scale oceanographic expedition in order to extend observations on a global scale.

[8] He took a keen and laborious interest in the evidence adduced by Canadian geologists as to the organic nature of the so-called Eozoon canadense, discovered in the Laurentian strata, also called the North American craton, and at the time of his death had nearly finished a monograph on the subject, defending the now discredited theory of its animal origin.

[6] Carpenter's most famous work is The Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Liquors in Health and Disease,[citation needed] originally published as a long-form essay in London by Charles Gilpin in March 1850.

He gave qualified support to Charles Darwin, but he had reservations as to the application of evolution to man's intellectual and spiritual nature.

[14] He rejected any occult or supernatural interpretation of hypnotism or trance-like states and insisted they were explained entirely by the physiology of the human mind.

[14] He defended the mentalist Washington Irving Bishop, whom he had experimented with, and considered such feats to be of great interest to the study of physiology.

Historian Shannon Delorme has noted that although he was considered a "great debunker of all humbug", his scientific thought was influenced by Unitarian culture that accommodated both materialist and teleological arguments.