Charles Cardale Babington was an English botanist, entomologist, and archaeologist. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1851. A contemporary of Charles Darwin, he was a student of John Stevens Henslow, active in botanical circles and succeeded Henslow as professor of botany at Cambridge. Apart from the Manual of British Botany which went into several editions, he published floras of Bath and Cambridgeshire; and a monograph on the genus Rubus. In his taxonomic approach, he was considered a splitter.

Babington is the name of an Anglo-Irish and English gentry family. The Anglo-Irish branch of the family is still extant today.