Henry Edward Armstrong

Henry Edward Armstrong was a British chemist, born on 6 May 1848, who was active in many areas of scientific research, such as the chemistry of naphthalene derivatives, but is remembered today largely for his ideas and work on the teaching of science. Armstrong acid is named for him. He was the son of a commission agent and importer and lived most of his life in Lewisham, a suburb of London. After finishing school in 1864 he spent a winter in Gibraltar for health reasons, and in the spring of 1865 he returned to England and entered the Royal College of Chemistry in London, now the department of chemistry at Imperial College. At the age of 18 he was selected by Edward Frankland to assist in devising methods of determining organic impurities in sewage, and at age 36 he became Professor of Chemistry at the Central Institution, another Imperial College precursor, in 1884. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society from 1876 and president of the Chemical Society of London from 1893 to 1895.