Background
Henry Edward Armstrong was born in Lewisham on May 6, 1848 in Lewisham, London, England. He was the son of Richard Armstrong, a commission agent and importer, and Mary Ann Biddle.
Henry Edward Armstrong was a Professor of Chemistry at the London Institution. He later worked at St Bartholomew's Hospital, the City and Guilds Institute and the Central Technical Institute.
In the spring of 1865, Armstrong returned to England and entered the Royal College of Chemistry in London.
Henry Edward Armstrong was a Professor of Chemistry at the London Institution.
Henry Edward Armstrong, 1848 – 1937, English chemist.
Henry Edward Armstrong, 1848 – 1937, English chemist.
In 1911 Henry Armstrong was awarded the Davy Medal issued by the Royal Society of London "for an outstandingly important recent discovery in any branch of chemistry".
In 1930 Henry Armstrong was awarded the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA).
Henry Edward Armstrong was a Professor of Chemistry at the London Institution.
In the spring of 1865, Armstrong returned to England and entered the Royal College of Chemistry in London.
Henry Edward Armstrong was a Professor of Chemistry
In 1911 Henry Armstrong was awarded the Davy Medal issued by the Royal Society of London "for an outstandingly important recent discovery in any branch of chemistry".
In 1930 Henry Armstrong was awarded the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA).
Henry Edward Armstrong, 1848 – 1937, English chemist.
Henry Edward Armstrong, 1848 – 1937, English chemist.
Armstrong, Edward Frankland (1878–1945), British chemist.
United Kingdom
Edward Frankland
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chemist educator scientist author
Henry Edward Armstrong was born in Lewisham on May 6, 1848 in Lewisham, London, England. He was the son of Richard Armstrong, a commission agent and importer, and Mary Ann Biddle.
Armstrong entered the Royal College of Chemistry, London, in 1865. Here he studied with A. W. Hofmann, then in his last year in Britain, and John Tyndal, whose lectures greatly impressed him. In his third year he started research under Sir Edward Frankland, at whose suggestion he went to Leipzig to study under Hermann Kolbe. He was awarded the Ph.D. in 1870 and returned to London in that year to start his lifelong career in research and teaching.
Armstrong’s first positions were largely “bread and butter” ones: teaching combined with research, often under primitive conditions. His first paper to the Chemical Society of London, “On the Formation of Sulpho-Acids,” was submitted in 1870. In 1884 he became professor of chemistry at the then new Central Institution, South Kensington, which merged with the Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1907. He retired from teaching in 1911.
During his long career Armstrong’s zeal and pioneering spirit brought him acknowledged leadership in many areas of organic research, in science and technical education, and in agriculture. But in the minds of his colleagues his chief contribution to chemistry was the teaching and inspiration of his many distinguished pupils.
He died at his home in Granville Park, Lewisham on July 13, 1937.
Armstrong was the first to devise curricula to relate chemistry and engineering, and he came to be regarded as the father of chemical engineering. One of his greatest achievements was in organizing the Education Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and served as its president in 1902. He vigorously opposed the didactic method of teaching and championed the view that the best method of teaching science was experimental. Appointed to the Committee on Management for Rothamsted Experiment Station at Harpenden, Armstrong served the rest of his life as member, vice-chairman, or chairman of this committee. Here his guidance and vision in the application of chemistry and scientific procedures to the problems of agriculture did much to advance this basic economic activity.
Another achievement in becoming a fellow of the Royal Society of London at only twenty-eight, and serving the Chemical Society of London as secretary, president, and vice-president. He had an extraordinary impact on his contemporaries, his accomplishments and influence being such that between 1890 and 1935 he was regarded as the doyen of British chemists.
Armstrong’s mission was to advance chemistry in order to improve society, and he carried it out with the fervor of a prophet. His published papers, many written with students, totaled more than 250. He did pioneer work on the structure of benzene, devising the centric formula independently of Baeyer, and his work with W. P. Wynne on the structure and reactions of naphthalene helped establish the dye industry. Many of his papers were concerned with the quinonoid theory for the color of organic compounds, the reactions of camphor and terpenes, and the mechanism of enzyme reactions.
(Introduction to the study of organic chemistry: The chemi...)
Armstrongs life's work was centred on chemistry education within engineering schools, and through it he came to be recognised as a founding father of chemical engineering. He also played an important part in establishing the SCI Process Engineering Group. Armstrong’s views were often prophetic. He was among the first to base instruction and writing in chemistry upon Mendeleev’s periodic table, and he early emphasized that molecules must have spatial configurations that determine crystal structures. His researches in crystallography were significant and antedated X-ray diffraction methods.
The vigor of Armstrong’s advocacy of unorthodox views at times caused intense controversy and often made enemies. On the basis of the unique properties of water and the hypothetical structure of water molecules, he castigated and ridiculed the theories of Arrhenius, van’t Hoff, and Ostwald because they ignored the solvent and complex character of water. He believed that the process of solution of electrolytes had to consider and include the unique properties of water. Thus, his ideas and researches were an important step toward the present concepts of ion complexes and ion atmospheres in aqueous solutions of electrolytes.
Quotations:
"Hypotheses like professors, when they are seen not to work any longer in the laboratory, should disappear."
"The fact is the physical chemists never use their eyes and are most lamentably lacking in chemical culture. It is essential to cast out from our midst, root and branch, this physical element and return to our laboratories."
"When the chemist makes gloves, he usually cannot help making them in pairs for both hands."
"That henceforth the absurd game of chemical noughts and crosses be tabu within the Society's precincts and that, following the practice of the Press in ending a correspondence, it be an instruction to the officers to give notice "That no further contributions to the mysteries of Polarity will be received, considered or printed by the Society." His challenge was not accepted."
"Many will, no doubt, prefer to retain old unsystematic names as far as possible, but it is easy to see that the desire to avoid change may carry us too far in this direction; it will undoubtedly be very inconvenient to the present generation of chemists to abandon familiar and cherished names, but nevertheless it may be a wise course to boldly face the difficulty, rather than inflict on coming generations a partially illogical and unsystematic nomenclature."
"Many will, no doubt, prefer to retain old unsystematic names as far as possible, but it is easy to see that the desire to avoid change may carry us too far in this direction; it will undoubtedly be very inconvenient to the present generation of chemists to abandon familiar and cherished names, but nevertheless it may be a wise course to boldly face the difficulty, rather than inflict on coming generations a partially illogical and unsystematic nomenclature."
"After all, we scientific workers ... like women, are the victims of fashion: at one time we wear dissociated ions, at another electrons; and we are always loth to don rational clothing; some fixed belief we must have manufactured for us: we are high or low church, of this or that degree of nonconformity, according to the school in which we are brought up-but the agnostic is always rare of us and of late years the critic has been taboo."
"I notice that, in the lecture … which Prof. Lowry gave recently, in Paris … he brought forward certain freak formulae for tartaric acid, in which hydrogen figures as bigamist … I may say, he but follows the loose example set by certain Uesanians, especially one G. N. Lewis, a Californian thermodynamiter, who has chosen to disregard the fundamental canons of chemistry—for no obvious reason other than that of indulging in premature speculation upon electrons as the cause of valency."
In 1876, at the age of 28, he was elected as a fellow to the Royal Society and served the Chemical Society in London as secretary, vice-president and president (1893-1895).
Armstrong had a very vigorous mind and independent spirit, which, coupled with great breadth of interests and personal drive, enabled him to assume leadership in the development of technological chemistry in Great Britain.
In 1877 Armstrong married Frances Louisa Lavers of Plumstead, Kent, who bore him four sons and three daughters. His eldest son, Edward Frankland, achieved prominence as an industrial chemist.
At the age of 17, Armstrong joined the Royal College of Chemistry as a research assistant to Sir Edward Frankland.
