Abstract
BY the death of Alfred E. Fletcher, at the great age of ninety-four, the country has lost a scientific worker who, in his particular sphere, exercised on chemical manufacture a powerful and healthful influence. Born in 1826, Fletcher completed his school education in Berlin, and was employed for a time on railway surveying. He relinquished his career as an engineer in order to attend the science classes at University College, London (being debarred as a Nonconformist from attending the older universities), where he studied mathematics and chemistry, for which he received the gold medal in 1851. In the following year he was elected a fellow of the Chemical Society, and afterwards began a series of researches on artificial colouring matters, a field of inquiry which had been developed by Perkin's discovery of mauve in 1856, and greatly stimulated by the work of Hofmann and his pupils at the Royal College of Chemistry. Discouraged by prolonged litigation on the subject of a patent for a new colour process in which he was interested, Fletcher accepted in 1863 the post of assistant to Dr. Angus Smith, the first Chief Alkali Inspector. The origin of this department, which played so large a part in Fletcher's subsequent career, was the numerous complaints from farmers owing to the fumes from alkali and other chemical works. These fumes arose mainly from the discharge of hydrochloric acid in the manufacture of salt-cake. These and other acid vapours destroyed vegetation over large areas.
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C., J. Alfred E. Fletcher. Nature 106, 185 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/106185a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/106185a0