Hermann Sprengel FRS (29 August 1834 – 14 January 1906) was a German-British chemist who discovered the explosive nature of picric acid in 1873, patented safety explosives and invented the mercurial air pump.
He was educated in Göttingen and earned his degree at the university at Heidelberg in 1858.
There he invented a generic class of materials called Sprengel explosives.
In addition he invented a very robust and continuously operable device called the Sprengel Pump[2][3] which could reduce the amount of air in a chamber to one-millionth of its volume paving the way for the filament light bulb.
He died at 54 Denbigh Street, London, S.W., on 14 January 1906, and was buried in Brompton Cemetery.