John Albert Newton Friend

Background

John Friend was born on July 20, 1881, in Newton Abbot, Devon, United Kingdom. He was the son of the Reverend Hilderic Friend, a Wesleyan missionary minister.

Education

Friend moved with his family every two or three years into a fresh circuit and consequently attended a number of schools. In 1896 the family moved to Ocker Hill, Tipton, Staffordshire, where he passed the examination admitting him to King Edward’s High School in Birmingham. There he won a Foundation scholarship and passed the London matriculation examination in 1899 and, the following year, the London intermediate examination which qualified him to study for the Bachelor of Science. The school awarded Friend a leaving exhibition which enabled him to proceed to Masons Science College, which had only recently become Birmingham University. There he studied chemistry under Percy Frankland and physics under J. H. Poynting. In 1902 he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree with honors. After receiving the Priestley scholarship, Friend spent a year carrying out research on Caro’s permono-sulfuric acid and was awarded a Master of Science in 1903. In 1906 he enrolled at the University of Würzburg. There under Wilhelm Manchot, he carried out research on carbonyl derivatives of cuprous salts, for which he was awarded the Ph.D. in 1908.

Career

After receiving a Master of Arts, Friend became assistant science master at the Dual Watford Grammar Schools, where he taught chemistry and physics. Soon thereafter he began his researches on the corrosion of metals. He demonstrated that the resistance of steel to neutral corroding media rises with increasing chromium content.

In September 1908 Friend was appointed a lecturer in chemistry at the Darlington Technical College. In October 1909 he began classes in the chemistry of paints, the first on the subject to be held outside London. Friend left Darlington for Worcester in 1912, to become head of the Victoria Institute Science and Technical Schools. In 1916, in London, he was appointed lieutenant in the Anti-Gas Section of the Royal Army Medical Corps (later taken over by the Royal Engineers). In 1917 Friend was invited to act as scientific adviser to the Sea Action Committee of the Institution of Civil Engineers and carried out valuable researches on corrosion by seawater. He also conducted experiments at Southampton and Weston-super-Mare to compare the protective efficiencies of various paint coatings on steel plates exposed to similar corrosive influences.

At the end of World War I, Friend returned to his post at Worcester. In 1920 he became head of the chemistry department at the Birmingham College of Advanced Technology, which in 1965 became the University of Aston in Birmingham.

After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Friend joined the Local Defense Volunteers (later the Home Guard) and founded a chemical defense school, which was responsible for training some 50,000 Home Guard personnel in antigas measures. In 1946, having reached the age limit of sixty-five, he retired from Birmingham and was appointed a lecturer in science in the service of the Central Advisory Council for Adult Education in His Majesty’s Forces, in which capacity he lectured at camps in Europe, Africa, and the Near East. He returned to England in 1950 and began to lecture at various military camps in the Midlands for the Birmingham University Extra-Mural Department, an activity which advancing age forced him to relinquish in 1958.

Friend’s research activities constitute an unusual blend of pure and applied topics. He authored twenty-four science books. The work, which began in 1914 and ultimately comprised twenty-two volumes, was not completed until 1930.

Achievements

• John Friend was a distinguished teacher and author. He vigorously pursued research on valence theory, persulfates, metallic corrosion, paints, linseed oil, rare earths, solubilities of salts, viscosities of organic liquids, analysis of ancient artifacts, and the history of science. His best-known work is the Textbook of Inorganic Chemistry, of which he was editor and part author. In 1910 Friend was awarded the Doctor of Science by Birmingham University.

Works

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  • The theory of valency 1909
  • Introduction to the Chemistry of Paints 1910
  • The Corrosion of Iron and Steel 1911
  • The chemistry of linseed oil 1917
  • The Chemistry of Combustion 1922
  • Iron in Antiquity 1926
  • Demonology, sympathetic magic and witchcraft 1961

Membership

Friend was a member of the Royal Institute of Chemistry. He was also an honorary member of the Oil and Colour Chemists’ Association, the British Association of Chemists and of the Birmingham University Chemical Society.

Personality

Although most of his books deal with chemistry and related subjects, Friend was also interested in and wrote about mathematical puzzles, demonology, sympathetic magic, and witchcraft.

Connections

Father:

Reverend Hilderic Friend

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography