Henry Edward Armstrong
Encyclopedia
Henry Edward Armstrong FRS
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

  (6 May 1848 – 13 July 1937) was an English chemist. Although Armstrong was active in many areas of scientific research, such as the chemistry of naphthalene derivatives, he is remembered today largely for his ideas and work on the teaching of science. Armstrong's acid
Armstrong's acid
Armstrong's acid is a strong acid which is related to toluenesulfonic acid and is used in chemical synthesis. It was named for British chemist Henry Edward Armstrong. It is sometimes used as a divalent counterion for forming salts of basic drug compounds, as an alternative to the related mesylate...

 is named for him.

Life and work

Armstrong was born and lived most of his life in Lewisham
Lewisham
Lewisham is a district in South London, England, located in the London Borough of Lewisham. It is situated south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.-History:...

, a suburb of London. After finishing school in 1864 at age 16, he spent a winter in Gibraltar, with a relative, for health reasons. In the spring of 1865, Armstrong returned to England and entered the Royal College of Chemistry in London, now the department of chemistry at Imperial College. Chemical training in those days was not lengthy, and at the age of 18 he was selected by Edward Frankland
Edward Frankland
Sir Edward Frankland, KCB, FRS was a chemist, one of the foremost of his day. He was an expert in water quality and analysis, and originated the concept of combining power, or valence, in chemistry. He was also one of the originators of organometallic chemistry.-Biography:Edward Frankland was born...

 to assist in devising methods of determining organic impurities in sewage.

Armstrong pursued further studies under Hermann Kolbe at Leipzig, earning a Ph.D. in 1869 for work on "acids of sulfur." A permanent appointment in 1879 at City and Guilds of London Institute, now also a part of Imperial College, followed. At age 36, Armstrong became Professor of Chemistry at yet another Imperial College precursor, the Central Institution in 1884. It was here that he established a three-year diploma course in chemical engineering
Chemical engineering
Chemical engineering is the branch of engineering that deals with physical science , and life sciences with mathematics and economics, to the process of converting raw materials or chemicals into more useful or valuable forms...

, "seeing the need for a more scientific attitude of mind among British industrialists"
He had already started on the systematic synthesis, degradation, and structural constitution of many naphthalene
Naphthalene
Naphthalene is an organic compound with formula . It is a white crystalline solid with a characteristic odor that is detectable at concentrations as low as 0.08 ppm by mass. As an aromatic hydrocarbon, naphthalene's structure consists of a fused pair of benzene rings...

 derivatives in 1881, building on earlier work on benzene derivatives and Erlenmeyer
Richard August Carl Emil Erlenmeyer
Richard August Carl Emil Erlenmeyer or Emil Erlenmeyer was a German chemist known for formulating the Erlenmeyer Ruleand designing a type of chemical flask.-Biography:...

’s proposal for the structure of naphthalene. W. P. Wynne was his most important collaborator; their 263 naphthalene samples, accrued over several decades, are now preserved at Imperial College as the Armstrong-Wynne Collection. This research on naphthalene gave much impetus to the synthetic dye industry.

Armstrong's later researches dealt with terpenes, particularly camphor
Camphor
Camphor is a waxy, white or transparent solid with a strong, aromatic odor. It is a terpenoid with the chemical formula C10H16O. It is found in wood of the camphor laurel , a large evergreen tree found in Asia and also of Dryobalanops aromatica, a giant of the Bornean forests...

, with water purification
Water purification
Water purification is the process of removing undesirable chemicals, materials, and biological contaminants from contaminated water. The goal is to produce water fit for a specific purpose...

, helping to eradicate typhoid fever, and with crystallography
Crystallography
Crystallography is the experimental science of the arrangement of atoms in solids. The word "crystallography" derives from the Greek words crystallon = cold drop / frozen drop, with its meaning extending to all solids with some degree of transparency, and grapho = write.Before the development of...

.

In 1887, Armstrong became interested in classifying substituents of benzene
Benzene
Benzene is an organic chemical compound. It is composed of 6 carbon atoms in a ring, with 1 hydrogen atom attached to each carbon atom, with the molecular formula C6H6....

 in terms of their meta- and ortho-para
Arene substitution patterns
Arene substitution patterns are part of organic chemistry IUPAC nomenclature and pinpoint the position of substituents other than hydrogen in relation to each other on an aromatic hydrocarbon.- Ortho, meta, and para substitution :...

 directing influences. It was in a footnote to an article on that theme in 1890 that his centric formula for benzene first appeared. His six affinities acting within a cycle predated both the discovery of the electron
Electron
The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...

 and modern theories of aromaticity
Aromaticity
In organic chemistry, Aromaticity is a chemical property in which a conjugated ring of unsaturated bonds, lone pairs, or empty orbitals exhibit a stabilization stronger than would be expected by the stabilization of conjugation alone. The earliest use of the term was in an article by August...

. Armstrong recognised that affinities have direction and are not merely point particles, and so he might be said to have anticipated parts of the wave mechanical theories of the 1920s.

Honours and affiliations

  • Fellow of the Royal Society (1876)
  • Chemical Society of London, President (1893–1895)
  • Davy Medal (1911)

Further reading



External links

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