SCIENTISTS OF NOTTINGHAM AND DISTRICT 103 



observations. He was President of the Royal Society from 1778 till his 

 death, and it is recorded that he reformed several abuses of administration 

 during his term of office, d. Isleworth. 



BiGSBY, John J. M.D., F.R.S. (1792-1881), b. Nottingham. He studied 

 medicine at Edinburgh and, joining the army as a medical officer was 

 ultimately sent to Canada where he developed so great an interest and 

 skill in geology that he was commissioned to report on the geology of 

 Upper Canada. In 1827 he settled in practice at Newark. He was 

 elected F.R.S. in 1869, and in 1877 he presented the Geological Society 

 with money to provide the Bigsby Medal to be awarded biennially to 

 students of American geology, d. London. 



Brindley, James (1716-1772). One of the earliest of English engineers, 

 he was born in Derbyshire, the son of a small farmer. The Wedgwoods 

 employed him to construct flint mills for grinding calcined flint used in 

 glazing pottery. His reputation as an engineer was based on his associ- 

 ation with the Duke of Bridgwater for whom he built over 350 miles of 

 canals, all pioneer work in the development of inland water transport in 

 this country. 



Brown, Adrian J., F.R.S. (1867-1919). He spent the early years of 

 his life at Burton-on-Trent. Trained as a chemist under Frankland at 

 the Royal College of Chemistry, he was appointed in 1874 as chemist to 

 Salt & Co., Brewers, Burton-on-Trent, and subsequently directed the de- 

 partment of fermentation at Birmingham University. He published a 

 number of important papers on fermentation and hydrolysis. 



Burton, F. M. (1829-1912). Well known as an all-round naturalist, 

 a fellow of the Linnaean and Geological Societies. Burton lived in Lin- 

 colnshire most of his life, and from 1859 was at Gainsborough. The 

 author of many papers dealing with Lincolnshire geology, he was the dis- 

 coverer of the Rhaetic beds at Gainsborough, a discovery which he an- 

 nounced at the Nottingham Meeting of the British Association in 1866. 

 He was president of the Lincolnshire Naturalists' Union. 



Cartwright, Rev. Edmund, D.D. (1793-1823), b. Marnham, Notts. 

 Educated at Oxford, he was rector of Goadby Marwood in Leicestershire 

 (1779-1808). In 1785 he took out a patent for his first invention, a 

 power hand loom. He later invented a wool combing machine and 

 practically ruined himself trying to develop the use of these two inven- 

 tions. In 1809 a timely vote of £10,(X)0 from the Exchequer made him 

 independent and he spent the rest of his life farming and inventing new 

 machines, d. Hastings. 



Cordeaux, John (1831-1899), b. Foston Rectory, Leicestershire. In 

 1860 he settled at Great Coles, Lincolnshire, and earned a reputation as 

 Lincolnshire's most widely known naturalist. He specialised in ornith- 

 ology and took a leading part in the British Association enquiry, instituted 

 in 1880, into the subject of bird migration as observed on the coasts of 

 Great Britain and Ireland. He was president of the Yorkshire and 

 Lincolnshire Naturalists' Unions, and among his publications on ornith- 

 ology was a book on Birds of the H umber District (1872). 



