John Kidd (10 September 1775 – 7 September 1851) was an Englishphysician, chemist and geologist who took a leading role in Oxford's "scientific awakening" in the early years of the nineteenth century.[1]
Kidd's two geological publications — his Outlines of Mineralogy (1809) and Geological Essay on the Imperfect Evidence in Support of a Theory of the Earth (1815) — have been described as providing "the seeds of an Oxford school of geology," characterized by a distinctive emphasis on diluvial theory.[5] In 1818 he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians; in 1822 Regius Professor of Medicine in succession to Sir Christopher Pegge; and in 1834 he was appointed keeper of the Radcliffe Library.[4]
In March 1822 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.[6] In 1830 the president of the Royal Society appointed him as one of the eight authors of the Bridgewater Treatises "on the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Creation."[7][8] His treatise on the "Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man," which was published in 1833, offered "a popular rather than a scientific exposition of facts"[9] and set out to protect readers from materialism and the transmutation of species.[10] Kidd refused to "maintain an argument" about natural theology, addressing himself "exclusively to those who are believers."[11] He delivered the Harveian Oration before the Royal College of Physicians in 1836.[4]
Publications
Outlines of Mineralogy (1809)
A Geological 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).[4] This was the second Bridgewater Treatise.
^Rupke, N. A. (1997). "Oxford's Scientific Awakening and the Role of Geology". In Brock, M. G.; Curthoys, M.C. (eds.). The History of the University of Oxford VI, Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 543–62. ISBN978-0-19-951016-0.