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Frederick Augustus Abel
*** Shopping-Tip: Frederick Augustus Abel
:''For the German physician, see
Friedrich Gottfried Abel Frederick Gottfried Abel.''
Image:Frederick Augustus Abel.jpg right|250px|Frederick Augustus Abel
'''Sir Frederick Augustus Abel, 1st Baronet''' (
17 July 1827–
6 September 1902) was an
England English chemist.
Born in
London, Abel studied chemistry for six years under
A. W. von Hofmann at the
Royal College of Chemistry, then became professor of chemistry at the
Royal Military Academy in
1851, and three years later was appointed chemist to the
War Department (UK) War Department and chemical referee to the government. During his tenure of this office, which lasted until
1888, he carried out a large amount of work in connection with the chemistry of
explosives. One of the most important of his investigations had to do with the manufacture of
guncotton, and he developed a process, consisting essentially of reducing the nitrated cotton to fine pulp, which enabled it to be safely manufactured and at the same time yielded the product in a form that increased its usefulness.
This work to an important extent prepared the way for the "
smokeless powders" which came into general use towards the end of the
19th century;
cordite, the type adopted by the British government in
1891, was invented jointly by him and Sir
James Dewar. He and Dewar were unsuccessfully sued by
Alfred Nobel over infringement of Nobel's
patent for a similar explosive called
ballistite, the case finally being resolved in the
House of Lords in
1895. He also extensively researched the behaviour of
black powder when ignited, with the
Scotland Scottish physicist Sir
Andrew Noble.
At the request of the
British government, he devised the
Abel test, a means of determining the
flash point of
petroleum products. His first instrument, the open-test apparatus, was specified in an
Act of Parliament in
1868 for officially specifying
petroleum products. It was superseded in August
1879 by the much more reliable Abel close-test instrument.
In
electricity Abel studied the construction of electrical
Fuse (electrical) fuses and other applications of electricity to warlike purposes, and his work on problems of
steel manufacture won him in
1897 the
Bessemer medal of the
Iron and Steel Institute, of which from 1891 to
1893 he was president. He was president of the
Institution of Electrical Engineers (then the Society of Telegraph Engineers) in 1877. He became a member of the
Royal Society in
1860, and received a royal medal in
1887. He took an important part in the work of the Inventions Exhibition (London) in 1885, and in 1887 became organizing secretary and first director of the
Imperial College London Imperial Institute, a position he held till his death in 1902. He was knighted in 1891, and created a
baronet in
1893.
Books
* ''Handbook of Chemistry'' (with C. L. Bloxam)
* ''Modern History of Gunpowder'' (
1866)
* ''Gun-cotton'' (1866)
* ''On Explosive Agents'' (
1872)
* ''Researches in Explosives'' (
1875)
* ''Electricity applied to Explosive Purposes'' (
1884)
He also wrote several important articles in the ninth edition of the
Encyclopædia Britannica.
{{Wikisource1911Enc|Abel, Sir Frederick Augustus, Bart.}}
{{1911}}
Category:Baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom Abel, Frederick Augustus
Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Abel, Frederick Augustus
Category:English chemists Abel, Frederick Augustus
Category:1827 births Abel, Frederick Augustus
Category:1902 deaths Abel, Frederick Augustus
Category:People associated with Imperial College London Abel, Frederick Augustus
de:Frederick Augustus Abel
nl:Frederick Augustus Abel
ja:フレデリック・エイベル
ru:Ð?бель, Фредерик Ð?вгуÑ?Ñ‚
sv:Frederick Abel
*** Shopping-Tip: Frederick Augustus Abel
