He was one of the founders of the Geological Society of London in 1807 and was its honorary secretary in 1812_1817. He contributed papers on the Wrekin and the Shropshire coalfield, among others, to the transactions of that society.
Later he became secretary of the Royal Society of Arts, and in 1841 treasurer of the Chemical Society. In early life he had been a Unitarian minister for a short time. He was highly esteemed as a man of sound judgment and wide knowledge. He died in London.
Publications:
Journal of a Tour through North Wales and Part of Shropshire with Observations in Mineralogy and Other Branches of Natural History (London, 1797)
A Manual of Mineralogy (1814; ed. 2, 1815)
A Dictionary of Chemistry and Mineralogy (with his brother C. R. Aikin), 2 vols. (London, 1807, 1814).
JOHN AIKIN (1747-1822), English doctor and writer, was born at Kibworth-Harcourt, and received his elementary education at the Noncomformist academy at Warrington, where his father was tutor.
Miss Aikin died at Hampstead, where she had lived for forty years, on the 29th of January 1864.
See a Memoir of John Aikin, with selections of his miscellaneous pieces (1823), by his daughter; and the Memoirs, Miscellanies and Letters of Lucy Aikin (1864), including her correspondence (1826-1842) with William Ellery Channing, edited by P. Le Breton.
Arthur also up-dated the section on ship-building to recognise that it was no longer true that ‘all our ships’ were built of oak, though he did not discuss what the other ships were built of.
Aikin apologised in her preface for having to leave in one word which was not monosyllabic (King ‘Alfred’).
Aikin and Barbauld had certainly been concerned with catching their reader’s attention, keeping their interest, and providing entertainment, but for them and for many subsequent writers for both children and working men, entertainment had to be mingled with serious material.
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