Robert Warington, Jr. (22 August 1838,

Spitalfields Spitalfields is a district in the East End of London and within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The area is formed around Commercial Street (on the A1202 London Inner Ring Road) and includes the locale around Brick Lane, Christ Church, ...

, London – 20 March 1907,

Harpenden Harpenden () is a town and civil parish in the City and District of St Albans in the county of Hertfordshire, England. The population of the built-up area was 30,240 in the 2011 census, whilst the population of the civil parish was 29,448. Har ...

) was an English agricultural chemist, known for his research and publications on the chemistry of phosphates and nitrates in agricultural soils.

Biography

Robert Warington Jr. was the eldest son and second child of the chemist

Robert Warington Robert Warington FRS (7 September 1807 – 17 November 1867) was an English chemist considered the driving force behind the creation of the world's first enduring chemistry society, The Chemical Society of London, which later became the Royal Soci ...

, FRS. After studying chemistry in his father's laboratory and attending lectures by Faraday,

Brande Brande is a railway town with a population of 7,449 (1 January 2022)Hofmann Hoffman is a surname of German and Jewish origin. The original meaning in medieval times was "steward", i.e. one who manages the property of another. In English and other European languages, including Yiddish and Dutch, the name can also be spelle ...

, Robert Warington Jr. became in 1859 an unpaid assistant to Sir

John Bennet Lawes Sir John Bennet Lawes, 1st Baronet, FRS (28 December 1814 – 31 August 1900) was an English entrepreneur and agricultural scientist. He founded an experimental farm at his home at Rothamsted Manor that eventually became Rothamsted Research, ...

Rothamsted Experimental Station Rothamsted Research, previously known as the Rothamsted Experimental Station and then the Institute of Arable Crops Research, is one of the oldest agricultural research institutions in the world, having been founded in 1843. It is located at Harp ...

at Harpenden. Warington was from 1862 to 1867 an assistant to the Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester. Robert Warington

He was from 1876 to 1891 an investigator at Rothamsted Experimental Stations, where he published many articles on soil nitrification. R. Warington here made the first observation that

nitrification ''Nitrification'' is the biological oxidation of ammonia to nitrite followed by the oxidation of the nitrite to nitrate occurring through separate organisms or direct ammonia oxidation to nitrate in comammox bacteria. The transformation of amm ...

is a two-step process in 1879. In 1891 Warington was appointed by the committee for the Lawes Agricultural Trust to give six lecture in the United States before the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experimental Stations at Washington, D.C. from August 12 to 18, 1891. The lectures dealt mainly with the subject of soil

, based upon his own research at Rothamsted. When he returned to England, he did research at Lawes's Millwall laboratory. He was appointed in 1894 as an examiner in agriculture for the science and art department of the University of Oxford and was for three years, from 1894 to 1897, the Sibthorpian professor of rural economy at the University of Oxford. He was elected in 1863 a Fellow of the Chemical Society and in 1886 a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1884 Robert Warrington Jr. married Helen Louisa (1855–1898), third daughter of George H. Makins, M.R.C.S., chief assayer to the Bank of England. Robert Warington Jr. and his first wife had five daughters: Elizabeth (Betty) born in 1888; Margaret born in 1890; Dorothy, born in 1892; and twins, Katherine and Helen (Kitty and Nell) born in 1897. In 1902 he married Rosa Jane, daughter of Frederick Robert Spackman, M.D., of Harpenden.

Katherine Warington Katherine Warington (5 September 1897 – 3 July 1993) was a botanist and the first person to show that boron, as boric acid, was essential for the healthy growth of plants.Warington, K. (1923) "The effect of boric acid and borax on the broad ...

(1897–1993) became a famous botanist. Robert Warington Jr is buried with many of his family in a family plot in St Nicholas Churchyard, Harpenden, England.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Warington, Robert Jr. 1838 births 1907 deaths 19th-century British chemists 20th-century British chemists Agricultural chemists Academics of the Royal Agricultural University Academics of the University of Oxford Rothamsted Experimental Station people Fellows of the Chemical Society Fellows of the Royal Society