Background
Edward R. Festing was the son of Richard Grindall Festing and Eliza Mammatt.
Edward R. Festing was the son of Richard Grindall Festing and Eliza Mammatt.
He was educated at Carshalton and King"s College School. With Sir William de Wiveleslie Abney (also a graduate of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich), Festing studied the infrared absorption spectra of a number of organic and inorganic chemical compounds.
He contributed to infrared spectroscopy research with Sir William Abney in the 1880s. He was transferred to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and then "gazetted" as a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers at the age of only fifteen. In 1881, they established that the absorption bands were associated with groups of atoms in the molecules rather than the entire molecule.
They postulated the correlation of different bands to specific groupings, for instance the nitro group in nitrobenzene.
In 1885, Abney and Festing developed a colour photometer and undertook a range of colour measurements. East. R. Festing joined the South Kensington Museum in 1864.
He became one of two assistant directors at the South Kensington Museum. On the retirement of the Director of the museum, Sir Philip Cunliffe-Owen, in 1893, the museum was split into an Art Museum (which subsequently became known as the Victoria and Albert Museum) and a Science Museum.
Festing became the first Director of the newly formed Science Museum.
Festing was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (Federal Reserve System) on 4 June 1886. Edward Festing was the younger brother of John Wogan Festing (1837–1902), who became the Bishop of Street Albans. He had a son, Richard Arthur Grindall Festing, who worked for the Civil Service in Ceylon.
He died from heart failure.
R. R. doi:10.1098/rsta.1892.0014.
Royal Society.