Frankland laboratories

First, by indulging his passionate belief in science for the people, he gave students the kind of hands-on education in chemistry that he had wanted as a young man. Before Frankland, students everywhere learned science from books most never even entered a laboratory. Working tirelessly over a period of 15 years, Frankland gradually changed that and dramatically improved the state of science education in Britain. He compiled a list of 109 experiments that students needed to understand firsthand in order to pass his examinations. He wrote a textbook that became a standard for chemistry instruction, in part because it incorporated his ideas on valency and organic structures and his newly developed notation system. 

Looking back over his life, Frankland must have been pleased. Fecally contaminated water was no longer a principal source of human disease. Chemistry students were conducting experiments in laboratories firsthand. He had published his collected Experimental Researches at great personal expense to document his scientific role for future generations. And he could be confident that he had probably foiled any immediate attempts to pry into his private life. 

A letter from Edward Frankland to Henry Armstrong, dated 12 January 1869, reports that the principal of Owens College and Roscoe found Leipzig, on the whole, to be the best of the Continental laboratories they visited. RSL, MM. 10.93. 

Letters from Edward Frankland Armstrong to his father, H. E. Armstrong, dated 11 February 1900 and [summer] 1900. ICL. The younger Frankland also wrote his father of increasing anti-Semitism among students in the Berlin laboratories, ascribing it to the view that "nearly all the Berlin chemists are Jews." Letter of 23 December 1900. 

Chemists shared the euphoria. When Roscoe succeeded Frankland in 1857, he established a chemistry department that became one of the leading departments in the country, with new buildings (1872) that included his own private laboratory, two teaching laboraories, and more than twenty small research laboratories and staff rooms. By 1887, the number of students in the department had reached 120, and the department had an honors program for the best of them. One of Roscoe s assistants, Schorlemmer, a student of Heinrich Will and Kopp, was the first chair holder in organic chemistry in Great Britain, at Manchester, in 1874. Roscoe and Schorlemmer s A Treatise on Chemistry (1877) became a classic textbook.69... 

By 1900, Dixon had succeeded Roscoe, and Perkin, Jr., had succeeded Schorlemmer. The Schorlemmer laboratory and the Perkin laboratory (named for Perkin, Jr., s father) provided facilities for organic teaching and research the Frankland and Dalton laboratories (originally built in 1872) were for undergraduates. The private library and laboratory of E. Schunck were bequeathed to the university and moved there from the moors of Kersal. The John Morley laboratory for organic chemistry was completed in 1909.70... 

The historical development of the chemistry of organosilicon compounds is closely related to organometallic chemistry. In Bansen s laboratory about the middle of the nineteenth century, Frankland was investigating the reactions of C2HsI with Zn to withdraw the iodine from the C2H5I and form free C2H5 radicals. The product formed was diethyl zinc. It was soon discovered that an ethyl group could be transferred to other elements from this compound if the reaction were favored by the formation of a salt. 

Percy Frankland, together with his father, Edward Frankland, had set up a private analytical laboratory in London, and it was here that Toynbee commenced her scientific career. Though both father and son were chemists, they had a strong interest in bacteriological problems, particularly those relating to human health. Toynbee s first publication, co-authored with Percy Frankland, was on microorganisms in air. 

In 1894, the Franklands co-authored a book, Micro Organisms in Water Their Significance, Identification and Removal18 then Toynbee, on her own, wrote a more popular book, Bacteria in Daily Life,19 published in 1903. It would seem that after the move to Birmingham, Toynbee focused more on science journalism than laboratory research. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society in 1900, and was one of the first 12 women scientists admitted to the Linnean Society in 1904. 

Edward Frankland (1825-1899) discovered the first transition metal alkyl complexes - diethylzinc ( mobile fluid") and ethyl-zinc iodide ( white mass of crystals ) - while he worked in Robert Bunsen s Marburg laboratory (1849). Frankland was later a professor of chemistry in London. Alkyl-metal bonding occurs in practically all catalytic processes involving hydrocarbons, e. g., hydroformylation (Section 2.1.1), hydrogenation of olefins (Section 2.2), hydrocarbon activation (Section 3.3.6), and C-H-activation (Chapter 4). 

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