Edward Frankland
Frankland, Edward
Born Jan. 18, 1825, in Churchtown, Lancaster, England: died Aug. 9, 1899, in Golaa, Norway. English organic chemist. Fellow of the Royal Society of London (1853) and foreign associate of the Académie des Sciences in Paris (1895).
Frankland studied at the universities of Marburg and Giessen. In 1851 he became a professor at Owens College in Manchester and in 1863, at London’s Royal Institution; from 1865 to 1885 he held a chair at the Royal College of Chemistry in London.
In 1847, Frankland and A. W. H. Kolbe proposed a method of obtaining carbonic acids from compounds of fewer carbon atoms by using nitriles. In 1849 he discovered zinc alkyls and a method of obtaining saturated hydrocarbons by treating alkyl iodides with zinc. Frankland laid the groundwork for the valence theory and discovered trivalent and pentavalent nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony. In 1864 he developed a method of obtaining saturated and unsaturated hydroxy acids from ethyl oxalate and zinc alkyls.
Frankland was a foreign corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1876).