title: Edward William Binney
text: Edward William Binney FRS (1812–1882) was an English geologist. 
  
  Edward William Binney was born in Morton, Nottinghamshire in 1812. He was apprenticed to a solicitor in Chesterfield. In 1836, he went to Manchester. He soon retired from legal practice to study geology.
  
  In 1838, he helped found the Manchester Geological Society. He was elected president in 1857 and again in 1865. He also was the secretary and later the president of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. He studied the Carboniferous and Permian rocks in northern England and the Drift deposits of Lancashire. He and Joseph Dalton Hooker found the first coal balls. They also studied the geology of the country around Manchester. He became an expert on the Coal Measures, and his Observations on the Structure of Fossil Plants found in the Carboniferous Strata (1868–1875) was one of the studies of the Palaeontographical Society. His large collection of fossils was placed in Owens College.
  
  Binney was close friends with James Prescott Joule, William Sturgeon, John Davies and John Leigh.
  
  He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1856 and died in Manchester.
  
  References
  
  Further reading 
   
   
   Secord, A. "Binney, Edward William (1812–1881)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 10 August 2007
   [Anon.] (1911) "Edward William Binney", Encyclopaedia Britannica
  
  1812 births
  1881 deaths
  English geologists
  People from Nottinghamshire
  Fellows of the Royal Society