Charles Frederick Cross

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Charles Frederick Cross (born December 11, 1855 in Brentford , Middlesex ; † April 15, 1935 ) was a British chemist who, together with Edward John Bevan, invented the xanthate process for the production of viscose fibers .

Cross's father was a former headmaster and the director of the TB Rowe and Sons soap company in Brentford. Cross studied chemistry at King's College London and then worked for the Phosphate Sewage Company in Barking . From 1876 he continued his studies (especially organic chemistry) at the ETH Zurich (then Polytechnic) and at Owens College in Manchester, where he became friends with Bevan and was a student of Carl Schorlemmer and Henry Enfield Roscoe . In 1878 he completed his studies with a bachelor's degree in London. He went into the paper industry at Barrow-in-Furness (Barrow Flax & Jute Comp.). In order to further develop and market their cellulose research, Bevan and Cross resigned in 1883 and advanced their development at the Joddrell Laboratory in Kew (London). In 1885 they founded the engineering company Cross and Bevan in London (consulting for the paper industry, based in New Court in Lincoln's Inn). In 1892 they had their breakthrough with the xanthate process for the production of viscose. It was first used as a film and paper and textile cover, soon after Cross and Bevan developed a spinning process with Charles Henry Stearn from the subsidiary of a Swiss manufacturer of carbon filament for light bulbs. Their patents were marketed in Europe and the USA by the Viscose Spinning Syndicate - in Great Britain the Courtaulds company then produced.

In 1895 he received the Franklin Institute's John Scott Medal with Bevan . Cross was a Fellow of the Royal Society .

Cross and Bevan also wrote what was then a standard paper-making work in Great Britain.

Fonts

literature

  • Winfried Pötsch u. a. Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989
  • EF Armstrong: Charles Frederick Cross. 1855-1935, Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 1 (4), 1935, p. 458.
personal data
SURNAME Cross, Charles Frederick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British chemist
DATE OF BIRTH December 11, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Brentford
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1935