George Frederick Ansell

George Frederick Ansell (4 March 1826 – 21 December 1880) was an English scientific inventor, chemist and assayer, and author of a standard work on the Royal Mint.

George was apprenticed for four years to a surgeon, and studied medicine with the intention of adopting a medical life as his profession, but abandoned it for chemistry.

In 1854, he gave lectures in chemistry at the Panopticon in Leicester Square, London, but that institution did not last long, and Ansell accepted from Thomas Graham, in November 1856, a situation in the Royal Mint.

For the cyclopædia of Charles Tomlinson he wrote a treatise on coining — one hundred copies of which were struck off for private circulation — and his work on the Royal Mint was an amplification of this article.

This volume first appeared in 1870, and was reissued in the next year; its popularity was somewhat marred by the introduction of the narrative of his quarrels with his colleagues in the office, but it contained much information not to be found elsewhere.