Edward Frankland Armstrong (5 September 1878 – 14 December 1945) was an English organic chemist who researched carbohydrates, catalysis, and industrial applications. Armstrong was the eldest son of chemistry professor H. E. Armstrong and Frances Louisa (1843/4–1935), daughter of pharmacist Thomas Howard Lavers and was born in Lewisham, London. He was named after his father's favourite teacher

Edward Frankland Sir Edward Frankland, (18 January 18259 August 1899) was an English chemist. He was one of the originators of organometallic chemistry and introduced the concept of combining power or valence. An expert in water quality and analysis, he was ...

. Armstrong became interested in chemistry at an early age thanks to his father and studied organic chemistry in Kiel under L. Claisen in 1898. He spent two years in Berlin under J. van't Hoff and after obtaining a PhD in 1901, he became an assistant of

Emil Fischer Hermann Emil Louis Fischer (; 9 October 1852 – 15 July 1919) was a German chemist and List of Nobel laureates in Chemistry, 1902 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He discovered the Fischer esterification. He also developed the Fisch ...

in Berlin taking an interest the chemistry of carbohydrates. He returned to England and in 1905 received a DSc for work on carbohydrates. He worked as a chemist to the biscuit manufacturing company Huntley and Palmer, Reading while also pursuing research on

glycoside In chemistry, a glycoside is a molecule in which a sugar is bound to another functional group via a glycosidic bond. Glycosides play numerous important roles in living organisms. Many plants store chemicals in the form of inactive glycosides. ...

s with his father and

Frederick Keeble Sir Frederick William Keeble, CBE, FRS (2 March 1870 – 19 October 1952) was a British biologist, academic, and scientific adviser, who specialised in botany. He was Sherardian Professor of Botany at the University of Oxford from 1920 to 1927 a ...

. In 1914 he worked with the soap and chemical company Joseph Crosfield & Sons, working on problems of catalysis and was involved in supplying chemicals needed during the war including acetic acid and acetone. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1920. He became a director at the

British Dyestuffs Corporation British Dyestuffs Corporation Ltd (BDC) was a British company formed in 1919 from the merger of British Dyes Ltd with Levinstein Ltd. The British Government was the company's largest shareholder, and had two directors on the board. Backgrou ...

in 1925 which was acquired by Imperial Chemical Industries. From 1928 he served as a consultant chemist for many industries. He presided over the Association of British Chemical Manufacturers in 1935. He advised the government on air-raid measures during World War II. Charles Stanley Gibson and Armstrong married Ethel Mary Turpin of Woolwich in 1907 and they had three sons and a daughter. His second son Kenneth Frankland (1909–1935) also became a chemist but died young, killed in an avalanche while skiing. Armstrong died from complications following an appendicitis surgery. He was considered a poor speaker but wrote several books ''The Simple Carbohydrates and Glucosides'' (1910), ''Chemistry in the Twentieth Century'' (1924), ''The Sea as a Storehouse'' (1944), ''Raw Materials from the Sea'' (1945), and coauthored ''The Glycosides'' (1931).

References

External links

The simple carbohydrates and the glucosides (1919)

Chemistry In The Twentieth Century (1925)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Armstrong, Edward Frankland English chemists 1878 births 1945 deaths People from Lewisham Fellows of the Royal Society