Obituary

PROF. H. E. ARMSTRONG

A VETERAN OF BRITISH

CHEMISTRY

Professor H. E. Armstrong. F.R.S., who for 60 years was an outstanding figure in British chemistry, died yesterday at his home in Granville Park. Lewisham, in his ninetieth year.

The son of Richard Armstrong! of Mark Lanc Henry Edward Armstrong was born on May 6, 1848, in London, where for the most part he spent his life. Hc entered the Royal College of Chemistry in Oxford Street in 1865, of which the Gcrman chemist, Hofmann, was still in charge, and after two years there, during which he assisted Sir Edward Frankland in the development of the vac-uum combustion method of analysing water, he went to Leipzig to study under Kolbe. That experience left him with a life-long appreciation of German intelligence, organizing talent, and devotion to work, though he was far,from being a whole-hearted admirer of the chemical training to be obtained in German laboratories, especially since the universities became " commercialized."

After his retirn to London he began to work under Matthiesen at the medical school of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and for the next 10 years or so was in charge of the special classes in chemistry for students taking the London degree. Dtiring that period his appointment in 1871 as Professor of Chemistry at the old London Institution in Finsbury Circus gave him a laboratory of his own, although it was " little more than a coal-hole " he wrote an " lntrodtiction to Organic Chemistry " (1874) and the inorganic section of the article on Chemistry in the IXth edition of the En-

cyclopaedia Britannica (1876), the arrangement of which was based on Mendeleeff's periodic law, then a recent generalization; in 1875 hc became one of the secretaries of the Chemical Society, of which he scrved as president in 1893-1895. and in 1876 he won his fellowship of the Royal Society, whosc Davy mcdal he was awarded in 1911. He also reccived the Messel medal of the Society of Chemical Industry in 1922 and the Albert medal of the Royal Society of Arts in 1930.

TECHNICAL EDUCATION

Soon after the Franco-Prussian War the deficiencies of technical education in this country began to be recognized. The interest of several of the great City. companies was enlisted, and the City and Guilds of London Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education was formed. The first step taken by this association in 1879 was to place Armstrong, with the late Professor Ayrton, in charge of the teaching of chemistry and physics, and the two started with cvening classes in the Cowper Strect School. Finsbury. Plans had almost been settled for a permanent chemical laboratory on the site afterwards occupied by the Finsbury Technical College. and Armstrong objected to them on the ground that a chemist, to be of value to industry, should be trained also in mathematics and physics and in the elements of...