Henry Edward Armstrong

Henry Edward Armstrong
Henry Edward Armstrong as a young man
Born	6 May 1848 Lewisham, London
Died	13 July 1937 (aged 89)
Nationality	England
Fields	Chemistry
Doctoral advisor	Hermann Kolbe
Doctoral students	Martin Lowry
Notable awards	Davy Medal (1911) Fellow of the Royal Society

Henry Edward Armstrong FRS FRSE(Hon) (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 is named for him.

Life and work

Armstrong was born the son of Richard Armstrong, a commission agent and importer, and Mary Ann Biddle. He lived most of his life in Lewisham, 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 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, "seeing the need for a more scientific attitude of mind among British industrialists"

Armstrong's centric structure for benzene

He had already started on the systematic synthesis, degradation, and structural constitution of many naphthalene derivatives in 1881, building on earlier work on benzene derivatives and Erlenmeyer’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, with water purification, helping to eradicate typhoid fever, and with crystallography.

In 1887, Armstrong became interested in classifying substituents of benzene in terms of their meta- and ortho-para 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 and modern theories of aromaticity. 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.

He died in Lewisham.

Family

Armstrong married Frances Louisa Lavers in 1877.

Honours and affiliations

• Fellow of the Royal Society (1876)
• Chemical Society of London, President (1893–1895)
• Davy Medal (1911)
• Horace Brown Medal (1926)
• Albert Medal (1930)

Further reading

• Armstrong, Henery E. (1884). "On the Teaching of Natural Science as a Part of the Ordinary School Course, and on the method of Teaching Chemistry in the Introductory Course in Science Classes, Schools, and Colleges" - Address for the Proceedings of the International Conference on Education, London.

External links

• Works written by or about Henry Edward Armstrong at Wikisource
• Armstrong-Wynne Collection
• Henry Edward Armstrong (Open University)