Charles Giles Bridle Daubeny (11 February 179512 December 1867) was an English chemist, botanist and geologist. Education Daubeny was born at Stratton near Cirencester in Gloucestershire, the son of the Rev. James Daubeny. He went to Winchester College in 1808, and in 1810 was elected to a demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford, under Dr. John Kidd. From 1815 to 1818 he studied medicine in London and Edinburgh. He took his M.D. degree at Oxford, and was a fellow of the College of Physicians. Fieldwork In 1819, in the course of a tour through France, he made the volcanic district of Auvergne a special study, and his Letters on the Volcanos of Auvergne were published in The Edinburgh Journal. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1822. By subsequent journeys in Hungary, Transylvania, Italy, Sicily, France and Germany he extended his knowledge of volcanic phenomena; and in 1826 the results of his observations were given in a work entitled A Description of Active and Extinct Volcanos. In common with Gay-Lussac and Davy, he held subterraneous thermal disturbances to be probably due to the contact of water with metals of the alkalis and alkaline earths. Oxford In November 1822, Daubeny succeeded Kidd as professor of chemistry at Oxford, and retained this post until 1855. In 1834, he was appointed to the chair of botany to which was subsequently attached that of rural economy. At the Oxford botanical garden he conducted numerous experiments upon the effect of changes in soil, light and the composition of the atmosphere upon vegetation. In 1830 he published in the Philosophical Transactions a paper on the iodine and bromine of mineral waters. In 1831 Daubeny represented the universities of England at the first meeting of the British Association, which at his request held their next session at Oxford. In 1836 he communicated to the Association a report on the subject of mineral and thermal waters. The Reverend W. Tuckwell drew this pen portrait of Daubeny in 1900: Daubeny was a diligent yet not very successful lecturer. Between 1822 and 1854 a total of 618 people attended his chemistry lectures. A third of these were clergymen, while academics numbered 69 and members of the medical profession, 31. According to Tuckwell: ‘His chemistry lectures were a failure; he lacked physical force, sprightliness of manner, oral readiness …’ The students sat passively, writing down what Daubeny read out