Edward William Binney was born at Morton, in Nottinghamshire in 1812, and educated at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Gainsborough. He was articled to a solicitor in Chesterfield, and settled in Manchester in 1836. He retired soon afterwards from legal practice and gave his chief attention to geological pursuits.^[1]

Working especially on the Carboniferous and Permian rocks of the north of England, he also studied the Drift deposits of Lancashire, which resulted in him and Joseph Dalton Hooker finding the first coal balls, and made himself familiar with the geology of the area around Manchester. On the Coal Measures in particular he became an acknowledged authority, and his Observations on the Structure of Fossil Plants found in the Carboniferous Strata (1868–75) formed one of the monographs of the Palaeontographical Society. His large collection of fossils was placed in Owens College, Manchester.^[1]

Binney assisted in founding the Manchester Geological Society in 1838, and was then chosen as one of its Honorary Secretaries, later being elected President in 1857 and again in 1865. He was also successively Secretary (1848–52) and four-times President of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society (1862–4, 1870–2, 1876–8, and 1880–2).

Binney was part of a close Manchester social circle that included James Prescott Joule, William Sturgeon, John Davies and John Leigh.^[2]

He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1856 and died at Manchester in 1882.^[1]

Attribution:

•   This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Binney, Edward William". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 949.

• J. E. F. (February 1882). "Edward William Binney, F.R.S., F.G.S." Geological Magazine. 9 (2): 96. Bibcode:1882GeoM....9...96J. doi:10.1017/S0016756800172024. ISSN 1469-5081.
• Joule, J. P. (1882). "Edward William Binney, F.R.S, F.G.S." Nature. 25 (639). Macmillan Journals ltd.: 293–294. Bibcode:1882Natur..25..293J. doi:10.1038/025293a0.
• Kargon, R. H. (1977). Science in Victorian Manchester: Enterprise and Expertise. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-1969-5.
• Secord, A. "Binney, Edward William (1812–1881)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 10 August 2007 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
• Obituaries:
  • Manchester Examiner and Times, 21 December 1881
  • Manchester Guardian, 22 December 1881