After attending high school at the Johanneum in Hamburg, he studied chemistry at the London Polytechnic Institute and the Royal College of Chemistry.
He was one of the first of the pupils to study under August von Hofmann, remaining there until 1851.
He first worked on aniline derivatives and then began offering instruction in practical chemistry to artillery officers at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich, southeast London in 1849. He succeeded Michael Faraday in 1852 as a lecturer in chemistry. Abel later was appointed War Department Chemist in 1856 when warfare in the Crimea seemed to involve new principles of military science.
Abel’s career was devoted exclusively to the chemistry of explosives. He devoted a good part of his investigative attention to guncotton.
Abel also purified nitrocellulose. He pulped, washed, and compressed the nitrocellulose into blocks, sheets, discs and cylinders which were particularly useful for blasting.
Able was knighted in 1883 and become a baronet in 1893.
Sir Frederick Augustus Abel (1827-1902)
