Joseph Henry Gilbert

Life

Gilbert was born at Hull, the son of clergyman Joseph Gilbert and Ann Gilbert. He went to school in Nottingham and Mansfield but this was interrupted when he lost sight in one eye following a shooting accident. At the age of 24 he entered university studying 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; he also studied German in order to pursue his doctorate at the University of Giessen under Justus von Liebig. 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 St. Albans.

Lawes and Gilbert Thomson recommended Gilbert to Lawes who wished to conduct studies on his estate in Rothamstead. Gilbert moved there in June 1843 and worked there until his death on 23 December 1901. Although much of the work went under both their names, the chemist who conducted most of the meticulous studies was Gilbert. 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. and he was also an honorary professor at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester. He was knighted on 11 August 1893, the year in which the jubilee of the Rothamsted experiments was celebrated.

Personal life Gilbert married Eliza Forbes Laurie in 1850 and after her death just two years later, he married Maria Smith in 1855. He had no children from either marriage.