Henry Minchin Noad

Henry Minchin Noad FRS (22 June 1815 – 23 July 1877), chemist and physicist.

Noad, born at Shawford, near Frome, Somerset, 22 June 1815, was son of Humphrey Noad, by Maria Hunn, a half-sister of the Rt. Hon. George Canning. He was educated at Frome grammar school, and was intended for the civil service in India, but the untimely death of his patron, William Huskisson, caused a change in his career, and he commenced the study of chemistry and electricity. About 1836 he delivered lectures on these subjects at the literary and scientific institutions of Bath and Bristol.

He next examined the peculiar voltaic conditions of iron and bismuth, described some properties of the water battery, and elucidated that curious phenomenon the passive state of iron. In 1845 he came to London, and studied chemistry under August Wilhelm Hofmann, in the newly founded Royal College of Chemistry. While with Hofmann he made researches on the oxidation of cymol or cymene, the hydro-carbon which Gerhardt and Cahours discovered in 1840 in the volatile oil of Roman cumin. The results were in part communicated to the Chemical Society at the time, and more fully afterwards to the Philosophical Magazine, 1848, xxxii. 15–35.

Among other organic products, legumine and vitelline also formed materials for his investigations. In 1847 he was appointed to the chair of chemistry in the medical school of St George's Hospital, which he held till his death. About 1849 he obtained the degree of doctor of physics from the university of Giessen, and in 1850–1 conducted, conjointly with Henry Gray, an inquiry into the composition and functions of the spleen. The essay resulting from this investigation gained the Astley Cooper prize of 1852.

He next experimented on the chemistry of iron, and in 1860 contributed the article ‘Iron’ to Robert Hunt's edition of ‘Ure's Dictionary.’ This led to his appointment as consulting chemist to the Ebbw Vale Iron Company, the Cwm Celyn and Blaina, the Aberdare and Plymouth, and other ironworks in South Wales. In 1866 he became examiner of malt liquors to the India office, and in 1872 an examiner in chemistry and physics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. When the Panopticon of Science and Arts in Leicester Square was opened in 1854, he was appointed instructor in chemistry there. On 5 June 1856 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

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