Edward Packard, senior (5 January 1819 Hasketon–1899), was an English chemist and businessperson who founded and developed a major artificial fertilizer industry near Ipswich, Suffolk in the mid-nineteenth century, and became a wealthy and prominent figure in the life of the Borough.
[3] He soon installed a manager and went to London to study under John Collis Nesbit who had recently started a natural sciences course at his fathers school in Kennington.
[9] Commencing experimental workings at Snape in 1843, and entering contracts for supply of the raw materials (freighted by barges and lighters), Packard set up his first factory in Ipswich in an old flour-mill on the Orwell quay in 1847.
[10] Such was his success that the elder Packard (nicknamed 'The Coprolite King' or, more informally, 'the Golden Muck-Man of Ipswich') served as Mayor of the Borough in 1868.
[14] In addition to Crag specimens, Packard notably obtained and presented a near-complete ichthyosaur skeleton from the Lias at Street, Somerset for the benefit of the New Museum opened in 1880, where it can still be seen.