Edmund Knowles Muspratt

Edmund Knowles Muspratt (6 November 1833 – 1 September 1923) was an English chemical industrialist.

Edmund Knowles Muspratt was born in Seaforth, near Liverpool, England, the fourth and youngest son of James Muspratt and his wife Julia Josephine née Connor. His father was also a chemical industrialist who had established factories in Liverpool, St Helens and Newton-le-Willows. He was educated at the Pestalozzian Institute at Worksop, Nottinghamshire. He was then sent by his father to study chemistry under Justus von Liebig at the University of Giessen in Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany. When Liebig moved to the University of Munich in 1852, Muspratt went with him and studied medicine there where he gained the degree of PhD He then returned to Liverpool to work with his father in his businesses. He married Frances Jane Baines and together they had eight children, including Suffragists, Nessie Stewart-Brown, Julia Solly and Liberal MP, Max Muspratt.

Edmund took over the management of the Wood End factory in Widnes, Lancashire, from his older brother Frederic and also became involved in the management of his father's Liverpool factory. These factories manufactured alkali by the Leblanc process. During this time Edmund studied metallurgy at Owens College, Manchester and invented methods of separating nickel, cobalt and copper from the waste by–products from his factories. He also operated a plant at Wood End to recover sulphur by the process invented by Ludwig Mond. In 1867 the Widnes Metal Company was formed with Muspratt as its chairman with the purpose of recovering metals, particularly copper and silver, from the burnt pyrites used for alkali manufacture.