William Odling and his Demonstrators

In 1865 Magdalen College had, in accordance with the recommendations of the 1854 Executive Commission, taken over the Aldrichian chair and had renamed it the Waynflete professorship after their fifteenth-century founder, William of Waynflete, who had stipulated that his college should have praelectors in natural philosophy. Magdalen was not, however, required to offer the professor a fellowship that was a reform that came only in 1877, after Brodie had retired. The Aldrichian trust money thus released might have escaped from the chemists had Brodie not intervened and ensured that it was used first to 

Soon after his arrival in Oxford, Odling was elected President of the Chemical Society for two years, 1873-1875. His time in office coincided with disputes on how far the Society should be restricted to qualified professional chemists and how far it should function as a learned society open to all who wished to contribute to its aims. The issue was settled by establishing the Institute of Chemistry as a separate professional body that restricted its membership to 

A synoptic view of the teaching of chemistry in Oxford at the time of Odling s election is to be found in the report of the Devonshire Commission in 1873. This Commission was set up, at the urging of the British Association, to enquire into the state of scientific education and research throughout Britain. The chairman was the Duke of Devonshire, the founder of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, and Oxford science was represented by Henry Smith, the Savilian Professor of Geometry. The chemist on the commission was 

From 1886 the published lists of those obtaining honours in the natural sciences showed the single subject in which each candidate had chosen to be examined and so it is possible to follow the changing numbers of honours chemists. There were an average of 18 from 1890 to 1894, and in the successive periods of five years this number remained fairly steady 21 from 1894 to 1899, 24 from 1900 to 1904, 27 from 1905 to 1909, and 25 from 1910 to 1914. In the earlier years the chemists formed about half the total number of natural scientists but this proportion had fallen to about a third by the end of the period.  

Mrs Harcourt and Mrs Esson, the wife of Vernon Harcourt s mathematical collaborator at Merton. Odling had long been a supporter of women s education and, in 1893, became the first representative of the Hebdomadal Council on the Council of Somerville. 

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