Mansfield, Charles

Mansfield, Charles. "Researches on Coal Tar." Journal of the Chemical Society 1 (1848) 244-68. 

Charles, N., Mansfield, S. D., Mirochnik, O., and Duff, S. J.B., 2003, Effect of oxygen delignification operating parameters on downstream enzymatic hydrolysis of softwood substrates, Biotechnol. Progr. 19 1606-1611. 

Despite the availability of methods for extracting aniline from coal tar, this source hardly provided an abundant supply of the aromatic amine. Some chemists worked on the development of the two-step synthesis from coal-tar benzene. They included Hofmann s assistant Charles Blachford Mansfield, who pioneered the separation by distillation of coal-tar hydrocarbons, undertook nitration of benzene, and reduction of the nitrobenzene, probably by the method of Zinin. Mansfield s experiments came to an abrupt end early in 1855 when, while preparing samples for the Paris International Exhibition, a still in his laboratory caught fire. He was badly burned and died in hospital a few days later. 

Barnes, G.E. (1935). Report on hydraulic model studies for the outlet works and spillway of the Charles Mill Dam near Mansfield, Ohio. US Engineer Office, Zanesville OH. 

In 1845 when the Royal College of Chemistry was established in London, the prince consort persuaded August Wilhelm von Hofmann, one of Liebig s students, to head it. Hofmann studied coal tar. Charles Mansfield, one of his students, patented a process for separating some of the hydrocarbons in coal tar, but he died from burns when one of his large stills caught fire. This may account for Hofmann s hostility toward industrial applications of these materials before their chemical properties were fully understood. But the industrial application held financial attractions, and despite his objections, much effort was expended in this direction. 

Charles Blachford Mansfield (Rowner, Hampshire, 1819-London, 26 February 1855), a technical chemist in London, died as a result of a fire during the distillation of coal-tar.A posthumous work contains some very odd new names, e.g. style for the radical of a hydracid (hydrostyle) and its salts, etc. 

A Theory of Salts A Treatise on the Constitution of Bipolar Two Membered) Chemical Compoundsy by the late Charles Blachford Mansfield, ed. with preface by N.S.M. (M. H. Nevil Story Maskelyne), 1865 (53, 608 pp., 2 fold, plates). 

Although Charles B. Mansfield, a disciple of August W.von Hofmann, detected the presence of toluene in coal tar in 1849, it found only limited application at first as a chemical raw material. However, this changed in World War I, when toluene was used in the production of the explosive trinitrotoluene (TNT). Up to the turn of the century, coal tar and coke-oven benzole remained the only source of toluene, but during the World War I it was also produced by fractional distillation of aromatic crude oils from the Far East (e.g. Borneo, Java). 

Nitrobenzene was first obtained by Eilhard Mitscherlich in 1834, by nitration of benzene. In England in 1847, its production from coal-tar benzene was patented and the technology developed by Charles B.Mansfield manufacture began in France in 1848. 

Dulong Pierre-Louis (1785-1838) Fr. chem., research on refractive indices and specific heats of gases, co-formulated Dulong-Petit s law, devised empirical formula for the heat Earnest Charles Mansfield (1941-) US chem., expert in geoscience and minerals (book Thermal analysis of clays 1984) Einstein Albert (1879-1955) Ger. phys., originator of theories of relativity, laws of motion and rest, simultaneity and... 

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