John Hinchley

Hinchley was born 21 January 1871 in Grantham,[2][1] and studied at Lincoln Grammar School.[2][3] From 1887 to 1890 he served an engineering apprenticeship at Ruston, Proctor and Company[3] while attending science classes in the evening, being a prizewinner in chemistry, followed by a year as a science teacher.[4] A national scholarship and the support of a friend enabled him to go to Imperial College, London[2] where he graduated in 1895 with first class honours.[3][5] He successfully sat the exam for a Whitworth Scholarship.[2]

After Imperial College, he went to Dublin to assist Professor John Joly with the development of colour photography.[3][5] Returning to London he became assistant to a designer of acid plants and acetone production which stopped when his employer was killed in a road accident, so he became a chemical engineering consultant.[6] In 1903 he went to Siam to be the technical head of the new Royal Mint of Bangkok,[2][3][7] successfully developing a process melting 2.5 tons of silver a day and coinage to British Royal Mint standards.[8] Back in London he was again a consultant, designing and erecting a variety of chemical plants.[9]

In 1909 he was invited to give a series of 25 lectures on chemical engineering at Battersea Technical College,[10] the first regular curriculum in the subject in the UK.[11][12] These were popular, and in 1911 he was appointed lecturer in chemical engineering for two days a week at Imperial College,[13][10] in 1917 becoming assistant professor, all the while continuing with his professional work, but passing on the course at Battersea.[14][15] The same year he was promoted to the class of Fellows of the Institute of Chemistry.[16] In 1926 he was made full Professor.[2][17] The same year the article on Chemical Engineering in Encyclopedia Britannica was his work.[18]

George E. Davis proposed the formation of a Society of Chemical Engineers, but instead the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) was formed.[19][20] In 1918 Hinchley, who was a Council Member of the SCI, petitioned it to form a Chemical Engineers Group, which was done, with him as chairman and 510 members[21] In 1920 this group voted to form a separate Institution of Chemical Engineers, which was achieved in 1922 with Hinchley as the Secretary, a role he held until his death.[22] According to the editor of Chemical Age just after his death, "The establishment, a few years later, of the Institution of Chemical Engineers was due to him perhaps more than any single person."[23] The journal Nature described him as instrumental in its formation.[3]

It was while at Imperial College that he was introduced to a student at the Royal College of Art, Edith Mary Mason.[24] She was later a member of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers.[25] They were married on 4 August 1903.[7] She designed the Seal for the Institution of Chemical Engineers, which was executed by medallist Cecil Thomas, a fellow member of the same Royal Society.[26][27]

While in Siam, he became a freemason and was involved in setting up the Imperial College Masonic lodge.[3]

Plaque dedicated to John Hinchley at Golders Green Crematorium

He died 13 August 1931 after a long illness.[2][28][29] He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium and the ashes scattered in the Garden of Rest,[30] where there is now a memorial.[31]

The Institution of Chemical Engineers instituted an annual Hinchley Memorial Lecture in 1932 [32] and a Hinchley Medal in 1943 for the most meritorious student of chemical engineering at Imperial College. The Medal continues, but is now directly awarded by the college.[33][34]

• Hinchley, Edith (1935). John William Hinchley: Chemical Engineer. South Kensington: Lamley & Co.
• Divall, Colin; Johnstone, Sean (2000). Scaling Up - The Institution of Chemical Engineers and the Rise of a New Profession. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.