Edmund Percival
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Life
He was born in Hinckley in central England on 10 November 1907, the son of Elizabeth Martha Whittaker (1879-1949) and her husband, Albert Henry Percival (1877-1959). He was educated at King Edward VII Grammar School at Coalville in Leicestershire, and studied chemistry at the University of Birmingham, graduating in 1928 with a BSc with first class honours. After a year at McGill University in Canada (1929/30) under Prof Harold Hibbert,[1] then further research in Birmingham with Sir Norman Haworth, where he was his senior research assistant, he gained his first doctorate (PhD) in 1932.[2]
He began lecturing at the University of Edinburgh in 1933, receiving a second doctorate (DSc) in 1938. In 1941 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were James Pickering Kendall, John Edwin MacKenzie, Thomas Robert Bolam and David Bain.[3]
He volunteered as an air raid warden during World War II.
He became a Reader in Chemistry in 1948.
He died in Edinburgh on 27 September 1951 aged 43, and is buried in Liberton Cemetery, Edinburgh, along with his grandmother.
Publications
- Structural Carbohydrate Chemistry (1950, 1962)
Family
In 1934 he married colleague and fellow-chemist Ethel Elizabeth (Betty) Kempson (1906-1997) at St Pauls Church in Walsall. They had one daughter (Sheila Morag) and one son (John Kempson). In 1962 Betty married Richard Henry McDowell.
