Nature Vol 140-N3534.Indd

140 NATURE jl:LY 24, 1937 Obituary Notices Prof. H. E. Armstrong, F.R.S. College, South Kensington, where a novel type of ENRY EDWARD ARMSTRONG, whose death institution came into being, self-governed academic H on July 13 in his ninetieth year we regret to ally by its four professors-{)hemistry, engineering, announce, was born on May 6, 1848, in Lewisham, mathematics and physics-and independent of ex where he lived all his life. Of the influences during ternal examiners, which rapidly grew to be recognized his early youth which inclined him to chemistry, as a great professional school of engineering. But in little is known, but when he left Colfe's Grammar 1911, when the City and Guilds College by incorpora School at Lewisham his father, acting on the advice tion became the engineering section of the Imperial of an engineering friend, allowed him to become a College of Science and Technology, its chemistry and student at the Royal College of Chemistry, Oxford mathematics departments were closed down, although Street, in the summer term of 1865, actually Hof provision was made for chemistry diploma students mann's last term before his departure for Berlin. to finish their course under Armstrong's supervision Chemistry was the only subject taught, but the with its completion, chemistry ceased to be taught College was affiliated to the Royal School of Mines, in the City and Guilds College, and the last of the then housed in Jermyn Street. A free lance, he laboratories of the department was dismantled in attended such courses at the two institutions as he 1914. thought fit, including among them those given by The subm!'Jrgence of the chemistry department Tyndall, Huxley and Ramsay, being also for some involved also the closing down of its crystallography unexplained reason an almost regular attendant on laboratory, the only one in Britain, after an existence Saturdays in the operating theatre of St. Bartholo of rather more than a quarter of a century_ Convinced mew's HospitaL This roving quest came to an end that the most certain method of identifying a sub when Frankland, who had followed Hofmann as stance was to be found in its crystalline form, professor and, towards the close of 1866, had been Armstrong in 1886 determined that, as an essential appointed with two other members a Royal Com part of their training, diploma students in chemistry mission to inquire into the pollution of rivers in Great should measure any new crystalline substances they Britain, took him into the private laboratory, where might prepare which were suitable for the purpose. together they developed the combustion in vacuo To this end a course of laboratory instruction was method of water analysis, which played so important arranged by Mr. H. A. (now Sir Henry) Miers, and a part in the campaign for ensuring the safety of the under his direction and that of Pope and of Lowry domestic water supplies of the country. who succeeded him, a wealth of material was In October 1868, while yet young and impression accumulated, which led to the publication by able, Armstrong went to Leipzig to work under Armstrong, conjointly with Colgate and Rodd, of a. Kolbe, an inspiring teacher, hut remembered also as series of papers under the title " Morphological an unsparing and provocative critic. Graduating Studies of Benzene Derivatives" in the Proceedings Ph.D. after five semesters, he returned to work with of the Royal Society during 1910-14- Matthiessen on alkaloids at St. Bartholomew's Thus ended an interesting and-if account be Hospital Medical School and, during the next twelve taken of the careers of students trained by its years, had charge of the chemistry classes for medical methods-a successful experiment in teaching chem students preparing for the London degree ; his istry on scientific, if unorthodox, lines. For Armstrong, appointment as professor of chemistry at the London such an ending was unrelieved tragedy. Thereafter, Institution, Finsbury Square, followed a few months although a small suite of laboratories was placed at later. An earlier occupant of the chair had been Sir his service in the Royal College of Science building, George Grove, inventor of the unpolarizable Grove it was no longer as an investigator but by controversy cell and the hydrogen-oxygen gas battery: Arm that his work as missionary for the propaga.tion of strong's interest in the general problem of chemical the truth as he conceived it was carried on. interchange, and particularly of the part played by During the tenure of his chair at the London the depolarizer, can be dated from his discovery of Institution, Armstrong maintained a steady output specimens of the battery in the Institution's laboratory of research, but it was in an unexpected role that he and the purchase of a copy of Grove's memoirs. first directed attention to himself. While working Armstrong's next appointment was that of pro with m edical students, but without previous training fessor of chemistry in the City and Guilds of London as a teacher, he-to use his own words-taught him Institute for the Advancement of Technical Educa self how to teach them chemistry and, aided by that tion, founded in 1878, but until the Finsbury effort, developed the system which became known Technical College was ready for occupation in 1883, as the heuristic method of teaching science experi the work of his department had to be carried on mentally in schools, in the advocacy of which, as during four years in temporary quarters at the opposed to the didactic method then followed, he Cowper Street Schools, Finsbury. A year later he never spared himself-or others-from the time he was translated to the newly erected City and Guilds first championed the cause at the International © 1937 Nature Publishing Group jULY 24, 1937 NATURE 141 Conference on Education, convened in connexion hydrocarbon could be ascertained beyond doubt. with the Health Exhibition of 1884. In the paper Incidentally, it may be mentioned that Armstrong's submitted to the Conference, he outlined a con series of papers embodying evidence for his view that structive plan for training pupils "to observe and carbon compounds exhibiting colour are quinone think and act with clearly defined purpose, the work like in structure belongs also to this period. being carried out with common materials and in Towards the solution of the problem of the con relation to common phenomena". This scheme was stitution of camphor from the analytical side, Arm elaborated in his contribution to the "Special Reports strong and his collaborators made many important on Education" published by the Board of Education contributions. With Miller in the early 'eighties, he in 1888, and in the second report of the British identified no fewer than four C10 homologues of Association Committee appointed in the same year benzene in the products of the action of sulphuric "to inquire into and report on the methods of teach acid and other dehydrating agents on the substance. ing chemistry in schools", whilst criticism of school Then he and Kipping, who joined the staff in 1891, masters figured prominently in his addresses as investigated 'camphren', an oxygenated product of president to the Chemical Society in 1894 and later the interaction with the acid-an inquiry which led to the Chemistry and Education Sections of the Kipping jointly with Pope to discover how to British Association. The heuristic method on the sulphonate, rather than to dehydrate, camphor and scale that Armstrong conceived it is dead : its fate to unravel the intricate isomerism of the camphor could not be otherwise under an examination system sulphonic acids thus obtained. Important, too, was -intensified since the widespread adoption of the the identification of the three positions in which School Certificate--which does not distinguish be substitution occurs in the camphor molecule : this tween the school and the academic outlook on science followed from the investigations of Kipping and Pope as a mental discipline. for the "It-derivatives and of Armstrong and Lowry Prior to the move to South Kensington, Armstrong for the ot- and It was while studying had three major problems in chemistry continually the nitration of dibromocamphor at the College that in mind : the confusion about methods of determining Forster's interest in camphor chemistry was kindled constitution in the naphthalene series ; the perplexing and there, too, that Lowry's study of the mutarota reactivities of camphor which served only to show tion of nitrocamphor in various solvents proved that the inadequacy of any formula for the substance 'isomeric change' is not spontaneous but dependent based on the benzene model ; and the mechanism on the presence of a catalyst. of chemical change. Before his contribution to the Armstrong's unwavering advocacy of Faraday's elucidation of each is reviewed briefly, it should be view that "ordinary chemical actions ... are mentioned that, as the College catered chiefly for themselves electrical" led him to define "chemical engineers, the number of diploma students in chem action as reversed electrolysis". The arguments by istry was always small. Nevertheless, it was not which this thesis was defended are to be found in long before the department as a school of research the presidential addresses to the Chemistry Section in organic chemistry attracted advanced workers of the British Association at Aberdeen in 1885 and from other institutions, doubtless in appreciation of Winnipeg in 1910; the presidential address to the Armstrong's pervading influence and a wise choice Chemical Society in 1895; and in frequent contribu of members of his staff. He was constantly in the tions to ephemeral literature during the last half laboratory, his technical skill was always available century.

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