Frederick E. King received his secondary education at Bancroft's School and at age 16 began study for his bachelor's degree.
In 1928 at St Mary's Church, Higham Ferrers, King married his first wife, Rose Ellen Holyoke.
Frederick E. King stayed at East London College until 1930, first as a postdoctoral fellow and then as a junior lecturer, teaching organic chemistry.
In 1930 he was awarded a Ramsay Memorial Fellowship and moved to Oriel College, Oxford to work in Robert Robinson's group at the Dyson Perrins Laboratory.
[1] In 1946 King was appointed, with strong support from Sir Jack Drummond, to the Jesse Boot Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Nottingham.
[4] King's team investigated extracts from many tree species, including "English yew, Nigerian satinwood, muninga, opepe, acacia, ayan, wallaba, eucalyptus, rengas and lignum vitae.
In the early 1950s British Celanese was the UK's leading manufacturer of acetate yarn and fibre and produced its own reagents.
[1] The last part of King's career was focused on British Petroleum’s research on making animal, and possibly human, protein feedstocks as a by-product of processing crude oil.
Frederick King formally retired in 1970, worked for one year as a consultant for British Petroleum, and then settled in East Sussex.