Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol II (1901).djvu/252

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Frankland
240
Franks

Adams-Acton (1896), presented by himself, hangs in the chemistry lecture theatre of the Owens College; there is also a portrait bust in the possession of the Storey Institute, Lancaster; and large photographs in the possession of the Chemical Society and the Royal Institution, London.

In 1866 Frankland was elected corresponding member, and in 1895 foreign associate of the French Academy of Sciences. He was also a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Bavaria, and of the academies of Berlin, St. Petersburg, Upsala, Bohemia, and New York. He was made D.C.L. Oxford in 1870, and LL.D. Edinburgh in 1884. He was elected president of the Chemical Society for the years 1871–2 and 1872–3, and was president of the newly created Institute of Chemistry, from its foundation in 1877 to 1880; he received the Copley medal of the Royal Society in 1894, and was elected foreign secretary of the society in 1895, an office which he held till his death. In 1887 he became a J.P. for Surrey and in 1889 for London. In 1897, on the occasion of the queen's diamond jubilee, he was created K.C.B. in recognition of his services as water analyst to the government. He was a member, with Thomas Henry Huxley [q. v.], Tyndall, and others, of the X Club (L. Huxley, Life of Huxley).

[Besides the sources mentioned, obituaries in the following: Lancaster Guardian, 19 Aug. 1899; Mining Journ. 19 Aug. 1899; Times, 14 Aug. 1899; Nature, 17 Aug. 1899; Berichte d. deutschen chem. Gesellschaft, 1899, p. 2540 (by C. Liebermann); Proc. Inst. Soc. Civil Engineers, 1899–1900, cxxxix. 343 (by Prof. Francis Robert Japp, F.R.S.); Lancaster Guardian, Suppl. 31 Oct. 1891; Cross Fleury's Journ. March 1898; Manchester Memoirs, vol. xliv. p. xxxviii (by Prof. H. B. Dixon, F.R.S.); letter by Prof. John Attfield, F.R.S., dated 15 Aug. 1899, in the Chemist and Druggist; Frankland's obituary of Tyndall, Proc. Roy. Soc. 1894, vol. lv. p. xviii; Men of the Time, 15th edit.; Biograph and Review, 1880, iv. 335; Manchester Guardian, 4 Jan. 1851, p. 6; The Jubilee of the Chemical Society, 1896, pp. 57–60, 257, 259, and passim; Thompson's The Owens College, 1886; Hartog's The Owens College, 1899; Ladenburg's Entwickelungsgeschichte der Chemie, 2nd edit. 1887, pp. 243–53, 287; Wemyss Reid's Memoirs … of Lyon Playfair, 1899, pp. 93, 95, 175–6, 430–431; Ernst von Meyer's Hist. of Chemistry, transl. by McGowan, 2nd edit. 1898, passim; H. Kopp's Entwickelung der Chemie, 1887, passim; Schorlemmer's Rise &c. of Organic Chemistry, 2nd edit. 1894, passim; Roscoe and Schorlemmer's Treatise on Chemistry, vol. iii. pt. i. 1881, passim; Schäfer's Text-book of Physiology, 1898, i. 911; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Proc. Royal Institution, passim; Oxford Univ. Calendar; Regulations &c. of the Institute of Chemistry; Poggendorff's Biogr.-literar. Handwörterbuch; Record of the Royal Society, 1897; private information kindly given by Frankland's daughter, Mrs. Frank Colenso, and his son, Prof. Percy F. Frankland. A memorial lecture on Frankland is to be delivered shortly before the Chemical Society by Prof. H. E. Armstrong, F.R.S.]

P. J. H.


FRANKS, Sir AUGUSTUS WOLLASTON (1826–1897), keeper of the department of British and mediaeval antiquities and ethnography at the British Museum, born at Geneva on 20 March 1826, was elder son of Captain Frederick Franks, R.N., and of Frederica Anne, daughter of Sir John Saunders Sebright [q. v.] His godfather was William Hyde Wollaston [q. v.], a friend of his mother. His early years were spent abroad, chiefly in Rome and Geneva. In September 1839 he went to Eton, where he remained till 1843. On 10 June 1845 he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1849 and proceeded M.A. in 1852. He had no leaning towards mathematics, then in the ascendant at Cambridge, and he devoted his leisure to mediæval archæology, and began the collection of rubbings of sepulchral brasses, which he continued during his whole life, and ultimately gave to the Society of Antiquaries. He was one of the founders of the Cambridge Architectural Society and an early member of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, while he was also one of the four undergraduate members of the Ray Club.

On leaving Cambridge Franks devoted his energies to the Royal Archaeological Institute, a band of young and vigorous workers then newly established, and he laid the foundations of his great knowledge of ancient, and mediæval art, in arranging the collections which formed an attractive feature of the institute's annual congresses. In 1850 he undertook a definite piece of work as secretary of the exhibition of mediæval art, held in the rooms of the Society of Arts, the first of many similar gatherings, and the precursor of the Great Exhibition of the following year. The interest that he had shown in the antiquities of his own country led to his accepting in 1851 a post as assistant in the department of antiquities in the British Museum, where, until then, no attempt had been made to form a series of British remains. Here he found his true vocation, and from that time until he retired in 1896 he had but one idea, the progress and enrichment of the collections under his charge; his whole time and energies, and later his more ample means also, were entirely devoted to this one object.