Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 21 June 2012
Technical Memories (Part 21)
Wandering and Wondering
In 1908 Alfred Leonard was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Research Scholarship (continued from last week). The 1851 Research Fellowship was and still is a UK scheme conducted by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 to annually award a three-year research scholarship to approximately eight “young scientists or engineers of exceptional promise”. Today candidates are required to be citizens of Britain, the Republic of Ireland, Pakistan or a Commonwealth of Nations country. The Commission has been awarding fellowships and scholarships since 1891. The Commission’s Archive contains material relating to various schemes as well as to the students who have held these prestigious awards. Previous award holders include 12 Nobel Laureates.
From his scholarship Alfred Leonard spent two years at the University of Bonn where he obtained the degree of Ph.D. He notes in his memoirs:
“The chemical institute was a detached building with several laboratories and two lecture theatres…in the main research laboratory there were fifteen Germans, three British, two Russians, and one French student…the majority were very keen on their work and it was interesting to discuss our problems amongst ourselves. These consisted largely in the preparation of new compounds and combustions thereof to verify their composition. My line of country was connected with tartrazin and related compounds”.
Alfred carried out work with Professor Richard Anschütz who had succeeded Professor Friedrich August Kekulé as Director of the Department of Chemistry. Kehulé was a German organic chemist. From the 1850s until his death, he was one of the most prominent chemists in Europe, especially in theoretical chemistry. He was the principal founder of the theory of chemical structure. Of the first five Nobel Prizes in Chemistry Kekulé’s most famous work was on the structure of benzene. Richard Anschütz was interested in stereochemistry and studied the isomerism of unsaturated acids with Kekulé. Anschütz made a point of teaching chemistry to British POWs in the First World War because of his admiration for another chemist, Archibald Scott Couper’s work on chemical structures. In later life Anschütz became interested in the history of chemistry. His name is associated with the Anschütz synthesis of anthracenes from substituted benzoyl chlorides. He had a big influence on the future work of the Cork born scholar Alfred Leonard.
On Bonn, Alfred noted:
“Bonn is situated on the Rhine about twenty miles above Cologne at a point where the river is some 500 yards wide and becoming really picturesque. It was popular to make excursions by pleasure steamers to Godesberg, Remagen, Konigwinter and many other beauty spots, but the most beautiful of all these was the valley of the Ahr which we used to explore on foot.”
In student life Alfred tells of the tennis that was catered for in the summer on an enormous flat piece of land laid out in hard gravel courts. In winter, when frost arrived this land was flooded artificially and this created an extensive area for skating. A full brass band provided suitable music and restaurant catered for the comfort of the skaters, while coloured lights at night gave the appearance of a “fairyland”. According to Alfred, “the orchestras at dances were superb and played music, very different from what passes for dance music today [1950]. The spirit of carnival reigned supreme on the three days preceding Ash Wednesday; business houses closed and the whole population joined in the general festivities including elaborately bedecked processions, fancy-dress dances and increased consumption of beer and wine.”
In 1910 Alfred returned to Ireland and became an assistant to Professor Senior in the Department of Chemistry, University College, Galway. A year later he was appointed Head of the Department of Chemistry in the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute, Cork, where he remained until 1916 when he rejoined the Royal College of Science, Dublin, as Lecturer in Physical and Metallurgical Chemistry. By the Act of 1926, he became a member of staff of the University College. As a teacher, Dr. Leonard was eminently successful, and generations of students came to appreciate his meticulous presentation of lectures and the thorough grounding he gave in laboratory skills. His training in the College of Science followed by his experience in Bonn had instilled in him a strict sense of discipline, and students in his charge rapidly learned that an untidy bench or sloppy notebook called for comment that was not readily forgotten. The high standards he maintained made an impact, and it was quite common for students to return as graduates in later years to pay tribute and to thank him for the training they had received.
Alfred Leonard played an active part in organising the profession of Chemistry in Ireland. He was associated with the Irish Chemical Association (Cumann Ceimicidhe na h-Eireann), founded by Professor Hugh Ryan in 1923, and when the ‘old Cumann’ became the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland in 1950, he was elected President of the new body. He retired from his statutory post in 1957, but continued to help, until prevented by illness, with the teaching in the Department of Chemistry. He died on 28 August 1966.
To be continued…