John George Children

John George Children (May 18, 1777, Ferox Hall, Tunbridge - January 1, 1852, Halstead/Kent) was a British chemist, mineralogist and zoologist.

Children studied at Queen's College, Cambridge. In 1822 he was working as a librarian in the Department of Antiquities at the British Museum when he was appointed assistant keeper of the Natural History Department in succession to William Elford Leach. The appointment was controversial as he was less qualified than another applicant, William Swainson. After the division of the Department into three sections in 1837 he became keeper of the Department of Zoology, retiring in 1840 and succeeded by his assistant John Edward Gray.

Children was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1807, and served as the society's secretary in 1826, and from 1830 to 1837.

His name is commemorated in the Australian snake Children's Python and the mineral childrenite . John James Audubon named a warbler after him, but the specimen turned out to be a juvenile Yellow Warbler.