Francis Arthur Freeth

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Francis Arthur Freeth

Kammerlingh Onnes
and was awarded a doctorate.

Early life

Freeth was born on 2 January 1884 in Birkenhead. His father was a

Frederick George Donnan, a physical chemist who would be a great influence on Freeth, who was quickly gaining reputation as a chemist himself.[3][4]

Brunner Mond

After university, Freeth went to work at a factory belonging to Hitnetts Tobacco,[2] but did not enjoy the work;[3] he quit, and instead joined Brunner Mond on 25 September 1907. On his first day at Brunner Mond, he arrived with a cache of laboratory equipment that he had bought himself on credit.[5]

Freeth became the company's chief chemist in 1909, working at the

Dutch Chemical Society in 1911 and devoured the Dutch chemical literature in his areas of interest almost entirely by 1914.[3][6][8]

World War I

At the outbreak of

Haber–Bosch process and applied it in plants to produce the necessary nitrogen compounds.[10][7]

First, Freeth was charged with finding a way to purify TNT from hot alcoholic solution. Freeth invented a vacuum cooling process; it was, however, very risky, and led to the Silvertown explosion on 19 January 1917, which killed 73 people.[3][10] Writing in 1962, Freeth said that the process was "very dangerous"; a second, safer, process that he devised was implemented at Gadbrook and produced larger volumes of explosives.[6] The Gadbrook plant almost suffered a similar disaster, but two courageous Brunner Mond employees put out the fire before the plant exploded.[11] Freeth wrote that he would, on a monthly basis, remind the Silvertown plant of the risk that the plant would explode, but that it was deemed "worth the risk".[7]

Second was the investigation of new ways to produce ammonium nitrate. Freeth built upon his pre-war work and implemented two processes he had devised in 1909 at an industrial scale in plants at Lostock Gralam, Sandbach and a specialised factory in Swindon.[12] For his work during the war, he was appointed an OBE in 1924.[4][3]

Dutch connections

Following his experience of the war, Freeth became convinced that the British chemical industry must conduct research itself, and he began on a project to recruit researchers, as well as cultivating closer links with academia, and arguing for theoretical underpinning for industrial research.[13][14] He was also a proponent of a rigorous quantitative approach to chemistry, and used his excellent knowledge of phase rule chemistry to attract talent to Brunner Mond, particularly from prestigious institutions like Oxford.[15][16]

In 1919, Freeth visited the

Nature.[18]

Directed to investigate the

University of Leiden in 1924—only possible thanks to a special decree of the Dutch Parliament—and joined the Royal Society in 1926 on the recommendation of Donnan and Lord Moulton.[4][21]

Imperial Chemical Industries and World War II

He stayed with the company after the merger that created Imperial Chemical Industries, despite being replaced as the research manager at Winnington by a non-chemist, Frank Bramwell, in 1927; Freeth was given a higher post in London, becoming Joint Research Manager with William Rintoul, but the change stung and he did not relish the bureaucratic nature of his new role. He retired from his research post in 1938 after a breakdown in 1937, but still did work for the company as a consultant, in addition to secret work for the government.[22]

During World War II, Freeth undertook secret research for the Special Operations Executive, including developing materials for field use or for sabotage by commandos or resistance groups.[23] During this period of activity, he re-connected with friends within ICI and returned to the company as a University Liaison Officer on 1 February 1944, recruiting fresh talent for industrial chemical research. He retired again in 1952, this time to work lightly as a consultant and spend time with his family. Of the second spell at ICI, Freeth said, "These eight years were astonishingly happy and successful".[3][23]

Honours

  • BSc (first class), University of Liverpool, 1905
  • MSc, University of Liverpool, 1906
  • PhD, University of Leiden, 1924
  • Officer of the Order of the British Empire, 1924
  • Fellow of the Royal Society, 1926
  • honorary lecturer, University College London, 1928–1945[24]

References

  • Allen, James Albert (1967). Studies in Innovation in the Steel and Chemical Industries. Manchester University Press.
    ISBN 0719002931
    .
  • ISSN 1748-8494
    .
  1. ^ Allen 1976, p. 105.
  2. ^ a b Allen 1976, p. 106.
  3. ^
    ISSN 0262-4079
    .
  4. ^
    doi:10.1038/142200c0
    .
  5. ^ Allen 1976, pp. 106–107.
  6. ^ a b c F A Freeth (18 January 1962). "Letters: Ammonium nitrate and TNT in World War I". New Scientist. 13 (270): 157.
  7. ^ a b c d F A Freeth (30 July 1964). "Explosives for the first World War". New Scientist (402): 274–276.
  8. ^ Allen 1976, p. 107.
  9. ^ Allen 1976, pp. 105, 107–108.
  10. ^ a b Allen 1976, p. 108.
  11. ^ Allen 1976, p. 109.
  12. ^ Allen 1976, pp. 108–109.
  13. ^ Allen 1976, pp. 110–111.
  14. ISBN 0792348907
    .
  15. ^ Allen 1967, pp. 14–17.
  16. ISBN 978-0854041398
    .
  17. ^ Allen 1976, p. 111.
  18. doi:10.1038/117350a0
    .
  19. ISBN 0941901297
    .
  20. ^ Allen 1976, pp. 111–112.
  21. ^ Allen 1976, p. 112.
  22. ^ Allen 1976, pp. 113–114.
  23. ^ a b Allen 1976, pp. 114–116.
  24. ^ "History – People – Major Francis Arthur Freeth FRS". Department of Chemistry, University College London. 20 September 2010. Retrieved 20 October 2014.

Further reading

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