Background
Joseph Henry Gilbert was born on the 1st of August, 1817 in Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, United Kingdom, the son of Joseph Gilbert and Ann Gilbert.
Joseph Henry Gilbert was born on the 1st of August, 1817 in Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, United Kingdom, the son of Joseph Gilbert and Ann Gilbert.
Joseph Henry Gilbert studied chemistry first at Glasgow under Thomas Thomson. Then at University College, London, in the laboratory of Anthony Todd Thomson (1778-1849), the professor of medical jurisprudence, also attending Thomas Graham"s lectures. And finally at the University of Giessen under Liebig.
Joseph Henry Gilbert was a fellow of the Royal Society. On his return to England from Germany he acted for a year or so as assistant to his old master A. T. Thomson at University College, and in 1843, after spending a short time in the study of calico dyeing and printing near Manchester, accepted the directorship of the chemical laboratory at the agricultural experiment station established by John Bennet Lawes at Rothamsted, near Saint Albans. This position he held for fifty-eight years, until his death on 23 December 1901.
The work which he carried out in collaboration with Lawes involved the application of chemistry, meteorology, botany, animal and vegetable physiology, and geology to the methods of practical agriculture.
In 1880 he presided over the Chemical Section of the British Association at its meeting at Swansea, and in 1882 he was president of the London Chemical Society, of which he had been a member almost from its foundation in 1841. Foreign six years from 1884 he filled the Sibthorpian chair of rural economy at Oxford, and he was also an honorary professor at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester.
Royal Society.