838 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



SKETCH OF PEOFESSOE FRANKLAND. 



AMONG the eminent men of England whose names are closely asso- 

 ciated with the contemporary progress of chemical science that 

 of Dr. Frankland has a distinguished place. Having a genius for the 

 theoretical and speculative side of his favorite subject, together with a 

 thorough and comprehensive discipline in experimental operations, he 

 has devoted himself with equal zeal and success to pure chemistry, 

 to its physical relations, and to its large applications to public and 

 sanitary questions which depend for their elucidation upon chemical 

 knowledge. Eminent also as a teacher and an organizer of research, 

 and occupying many positions of responsibility, he has exerted a pow- 

 erful influence in drawing students to this branch of study, and in 

 awakening their enthusiasm in its pursuit. 



Edward Frankland, D. C. L., Ph. D., F. R. S., President of the 

 Institute of Chemistry of Great Britain and Ireland and Professor of 

 Chemistry in the Royal School of Mines, London, was born at Church- 

 town, near Lancaster, February 18, 1825. He was educated at the 

 Lancaster Grammar School, and studied chemistry at the Museum of 

 Practical Geology in Lo*ndon, under Lyon Playfair ; and he was also a 

 student at the Universities of Marburg and Giessen, where he worked 

 in the laboratories of Bunsen and Liebig. At Marburg in 1849 he re- 

 ceived the degree of Ph. D. when he presented a dissertation upon his 

 discovery of a method for isolating the radical of alcohol and ether. 

 In 1851 he was appointed Professor of Chemistry in Owens College, 

 Manchester, and he also became Professor in St. Bartholomew's Hospi- 

 tal, London, in 1857. In 1863 he was appointed Professor of Chemistry 

 at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and in 1865 he succeeded 

 Dr. Hofmann at the Royal College of Chemistry (School of Mines), 

 then in Oxford Street, but since removed to South Kensington. He was 

 elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1853, and in 1870 he received 

 the honorary degree of D. C. L. of Oxford. 



In 1868 Dr. Frankland was appointed, in conjunction with Sir W. 

 Denison, K. C. B., and J. Chalmers Norton, Esq., one of her Majesty's 

 commissioners for inquiring into the pollution of rivers. The results of 

 these inquiries were embodied in six reports presented to Parliament, 

 five of them dealing with the pollution of rivers by the drainage of 

 towns and manufactures, and the sixth with the domestic water-sup- 

 ply of Great Britain. 



In 1871 he was elected President of the Chemical Society, and he 

 became the first President of the Institute of Chemistry in 1877. All 

 the chemical articles in the Arts and Sciences division of the English 

 Cyclopaedia were written by Dr. Frankland, or under his immediate 

 supervision. The " Philosophical Transactions " for 1852 contain a long 



