Frederick Woodward Branson, FIC, FCS (6 March 1851 – 30 November 1933) was a British chemist, glassblower, instrument maker and X-ray pioneer.
Frederick Woodward Branson was born on 6 March 1851 at Hanslope, Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, England.
At this time, Branson was employed as a chemist's apprentice, in the pharmacy of Messrs. Jay in the Drapery at All Saints, Northampton where he served his indentures.
[3] Branson would have inherited Hungate End farm via his parents, but his mother Sarah Ann, the natural farmer by birth died, on 9 March 1881.
A notice in The London Gazette, 26 March 1881, announced that Thomas Branson had been declared bankrupt, and that Hungate End Farm, Hanslope was to be liquidated by arrangement by Composition with Creditors in accordance with the 1869 bankruptcy act.
Early in his career, Branson became acquainted with George Claridge Druce who was an English chemist – botanist and a Mayor of Oxfordand, their friendship and mutual fondness of botany continued throughout his life.
In 1839 Thomas Harvey joined the business, when William West left the company to pursue analytical chemistry.
In 1844 Richard Reynolds joined the company an apprentice, he was born in 1829 and was the eldest son of an apothecary who died when the boy was only four years old.
1850 to 1851 he attended the school of Pharmacy in London where he took first prizes in chemistry, materia and botany in a contest held by the pharmaceutical society.
In collaboration with A. F. Dimmock, M.D., he contributed to the British Medical Association meeting in 1903 a paper "A new method for the determination of uric acid in urine" (Br.
At the 1905 meeting of the British Medical Association a further paper by these two authors was read, "A rapid and simple process for the estimation of uric acid" (ibid., 1905, 2, 1104), in which uric acid was precipitated and the precipitate measured in a specially graduated tube, In 1914, in collaboration with Dr. Gordon Sharp, he contributed a paper to the British Pharmaceutical Conference on the activity of digitalis leaves and the stability and standardisation of tinctures of digitalis.
Branson sought to secure in Great Britain the manufacturing process for the glass required for the equipment of munition factories.
His son, Frederick Hartridge, Associate of the Royal Institute of Chemistry AIC, became chairman and managing director of the company.
World War II he was in the RAF with 54 Spitfire squadron, in 1942 married Rita Blackburn, he went to Australia with 54 Spitfire squadron at the end of 1942, he met Patricia A Grant his second wife, He married Patricia in Leeds 1948, Peter emigrated to Australia 1953, when his father died leaving the bulk of the business to his eldest brother Frederick Norman, He set up his own pharmacy in Blackburn South in 1955.
His eldest son Frederick Norman Branson became chairman & managing director of Reynolds & Branson in 1953, at this point the company had a workforce of 150 people, In 1972 Frederick Norman sold the business to Barclay, later selling to the asset strippers Slater & Walker.
He developed an instrument for estimating the amount of exposure to X-rays necessary to obtain a fully exposed plate.
[14] New X-ray Meter "The peculiar glow exhibited by a "focus" tube working well furnishes a good criterion of efficiency as regards Rontgen rays.
A more definitive means of comparing the actinic power of the radiation has been produced by Messrs. Reynolds and Branson, Leeds.
In a memoir of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen by Otto Glasser, 1933, Branson's invention of a qualimeter is noticed.
"The Leeds Law Institute was, on the 23rd ult., crowded to the door on the occasion of a lecture by Mr. F. W. Branson, F.I.C., on that mysterious subject known as radium.
"The new metal, which Professor Pierre Curie discovered, has, as demonstrated by Mr. Branson, some wonderful properties and a probable great future.
"Mr. Branson first showed that radium is an element having the highest atomic weight known, and has a characteristic spectrum, by which it can be easily identified, and that it falls into the group of metals: barium, calcium, and strontium.
The former have very penetrative powers as regards metals and opaque bodies, and are identical with the kathode rays that are given off in an ordinary X-ray tube.
"With regard to the heat rays, the emanations of there from a tube of radium bromide, which had previously photographed itself on a photographic plate in the dark room, was shown by Bunsen's Ice Calorimeter, which instrument not only proves that heat is given out continuously by the salt, but measures accurately the amount generated.
The reducing effect on chemical substances was alluded to, also the destruction of living tissues, and bacteria by radium emanations, and the general aspects of radio-activity were also dealt with and illustrated by numerous experiments, limelight views, and in other ways.
"The address was necessarily technical in its character, but sufficient properties of the metal were indicated to create a degree of sustained interest, and many eminent scientists from all parts of the country were present.