The lecture will describe the career of Frederick Penny (1816-1869). Penny was apprenticed aged 14 to Henry Hennel, FRS, the “Chemical Operator” to the Society of Apothecaries in London. He then received further training under Brande and Faraday at the Royal Institution and later at Giessen with Leibig. His paper of 1839 on the equivalent weights of chlorine, nitrogen, potassium, sodium and silver, with near current values, brought him to the attention of Thomas Graham who supported him for the Chair of Chemistry at Anderson’s University (now Strathclyde) Glasgow.
Here he built up student numbers and exploited his brilliant analytical skills in legal and commercial consultancy, building up the largest practice, at the time, in the UK.
The lecture will review some of his pioneering contributions to the applications of analytical chemistry given in evidence at the trials of Madeleine Smith of Dr. Edward William Pritchard and of John Thomson.
Here he built up student numbers and exploited his brilliant analytical skills in legal and commercial consultancy, building up the largest practice, at the time, in the UK.
The lecture will review some of his pioneering contributions to the applications of analytical chemistry given in evidence at the trials of Madeleine Smith of Dr. Edward William Pritchard and of John Thomson.
