Frank, Robert

Adolph (or Adolf) Frank (1834-1916) was an important chemist of nineteenth-century Germany. Born in 1834 in Kloette, he began his career as an apothecary's apprentice and received his license in 1857; afterwards he studied chemistry at the University of Berlin. He then obtained a position as a chemist with a beet sugar refinery and used the results of his work there as a basis for his dissertation, which was accepted at the University of Goettingen in 1872.

In the late 1860s, Frank played a leading role in the development of potash deposits and their application as an agricultural fertilizer in Strassfurt, Germany. He remained interested in the problems of German agriculture, especially its chemical aspects, for the rest of his life. In the late 1870s and early 1880s, Frank ran a glass factory in Charlottenburg, which he sold in 1882.

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