Edward Frankland - Biography

Biography

Edward Frankland was born in Lancaster, England. After attending Lancaster Royal Grammar School, he spent six years as an apprentice to a druggist in that town. In 1845 he became an assistant at the chemical laboratory of the British Geological Survey in London. The laboratory was directed by Lyon Playfair, who had been a chemistry student of Justus Liebig in Germany. In summer 1847 Frankland visited Germany and met some of Playfair's chemistry contacts there, including Robert Bunsen. In August 1847 Frankland accepted a post as science-master at a boarding school in Hampshire, but the following summer he opted to return to Germany to be a fulltime student at the University of Marburg. Robert Bunsen was an influential teacher at Marburg at the time, and Bunsen's reputation was one of the main attractions for Frankland. The following year Frankland accepted an invitation to move to Justus Liebig's laboratory at Giessen. By this stage Frankland already had his own research agenda and had published some original research in chemistry. In January 1850 Lyon Playfair revealed his intention to resign from his professorship at Putney College of Civil Engineering in London and arrange to have Frankland become his successor. Hence Frankland abruptly terminated his studies in Germany and returned to take up Playfair's former position in England. A year later Frankland became professor of chemistry at a newly established school now known as the University of Manchester. In 1857 he became lecturer in chemistry at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, and in 1863 professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution, London. For two decades Frankland also had a teaching role at the Royal School of Mines in London.

Edward Frankland was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1853 and awarded the Society's Royal Medal in 1857 and its Copley Medal in 1894. He was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1897. He died while on a holiday in Norway, and was buried near his home in Reigate, Surrey.

His son Percy Frankland was also a noted chemist and a Fellow of the Royal Society.