Eric John Holmyard was an English science teacher at Clifton College

Clifton College

Clifton College is a co-educational independent school in Clifton, Bristol, England, founded in 1862. In its early years it was notable for emphasising science in the curriculum, and for being less concerned with social elitism, e.g. by admitting day-boys on equal terms and providing a dedicated...

, and historian of science and technology.

Scholar

His scholarly work included rectification of accounts of the history of alchemy

Alchemy

Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...

, particularly in relation with Islamic science

Islamic science

Science in the medieval Islamic world, also known as Islamic science or Arabic science, is the science developed and practised in the Islamic world during the Islamic Golden Age . During this time, Indian, Iranian and especially Greek knowledge was translated into Arabic...

. He translated texts from Arabic and Latin, and wrote extensively on Geber

Geber

Abu Musa Jābir ibn Hayyān, often known simply as Geber, was a prominent polymath: a chemist and alchemist, astronomer and astrologer, engineer, geologist, philosopher, physicist, and pharmacist and physician. Born and educated in Tus, he later traveled to Kufa...

. He was responsible with D. C. Mandeville for the re-attribution of the alchemical text De Mineralibus to an origin in Avicenna

Avicenna

Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā , commonly known as Ibn Sīnā or by his Latinized name Avicenna, was a Persian polymath, who wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived...

.

Textbooks

As a textbook author, he pioneered an approach to science teaching that included historical material. "His historicized science books were an enormous and long-term commercial success, with Elementary Chemistry (1925) alone selling half-a-million copies by 1960."

Teacher

He taught both Nevill Mott and Charles Coulson

Charles Coulson

Charles Alfred Coulson FRS was an applied mathematician, theoretical chemist and religious author.His major scientific work was as a pioneer of the application of the quantum theory of valency to problems of molecular structure, dynamics and reactivity...

 at Clifton, but his personal influence on them as scientists was low (in Coulson's case, even negative).

Historical works

• Kitab al-‘Ilm al-maktasab fi zira‘at adh-dhahab: Book of knowledge acquired concerning the cultivation of gold by Abu 'l-Qasim Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-‘Iraqi (1923) translator
• Chemistry to the Time of Dalton (1925)
• Avicenna De congelatione et conglutinatione lapidum (1927) translator with D. C. Mandeville
• The Works of Geber. (1928) with Richard Russell (1678 translator)
• Ordinall of Alchemy by Thomas Norton (1929) facsimile, editor
• The Great Chemists (1929)
• Makers of Chemistry (1931)
• Ancestors of An Industry: The story of British scientific achievement (1950)
• British Scientists (1951)
• Alchemy (1957)
• A History of Technology (1954-8) five volumes, with Charles Singer
  Charles Singer
  Charles Joseph Singer was a British historian of science, technology, and medicine.-Early years:Singer was born in Camberwell in London, where his father Simeon Singer was a minister and Hebraist. He was educated at City of London School, University College London, and Magdalen College, Oxford...
  
  
• The Book of knowledge acquired concerning the Cultivation of Gold: An Arabic Alchemical Treatise, by Al-Iraqi (1991) translator