Philip Joseph Hartog

“ Frankland was an exceptionally brilliant and accomplished man of science. In nearly every fresh research he broke new ground, and laid the foundations for important work in the future. It is by his suggestion of the notion of valency, and by the great contributions to organic chemistry enumerated above, that he will be chiefly remembered. Frankland's memoirs are markedly clear in general plan and in expression. He had great manipulative skill in the laboratory. ”

“ An immense amount of work was done on the river basins of England and Scotland, and the work has served as a foundation for subsequent investigations of problems still not satisfactorily solved. Frankland recognised the great superiority over other processes of intermittent downward filtration through land as a means of sewage purification. His investigations form the basis of the bacteriological process of purification now extensively employed. The work on water analysis finally absorbed nearly the whole of Frankland's time not devoted to teaching. ”

“ He was apprenticed about 1840 to Stephen Ross, a chemist in Dheapside, Lancaster, with whom he worked fourteen hours a day. During his apprenticeship he learnt chemistry from Christopher Johnson and his son, Dr. James Johnson, who evicted a tenant from a cottage to turn it into a laboratory for Frankland and other lads. In 1845 Frankland went to the Museum of Practical Geology, London, to study under Dr. Lyon (later Baron) Playfair [q. v.] Here he made acquaintance with Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe, then Playfair's assistant, who, like Frankland, rose later to the front rank of chemists. ”