Alfred Charles Glyn Egerton

Sir Alfred Charles Glyn Egerton, FRS (11 October 1886 – 7 September 1959) was a British chemist. After enlisting in the Coldstream Guards, he was seconded to the Department of Explosives Supply and did research into munitions. After the war he studied the vapour pressure of metals before his interest turned to combustion. He pioneered the use of liquid methane as a fuel. Early life Egerton was born in Glyn Cywarch, near Talsarnau, Gwynedd, Wales, on 11 October 1886, the fourth son of Colonel Sir Alfred Mordaunt Egerton, an officer of the Rifle Brigade and the Royal Horse Guards, and Comptroller to the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, and his wife, The Honourable Mary Georgina Ormsby-Gore, the oldest daughter of William Ormsby-Gore, 2nd Baron Harlech. He grew up at Glyn Cywarch and Brogyntyn, houses that belonged to his maternal grandfather. He was educated at Eton College, which he entered in 1900. Contemporaries included Robert Strutt, Thomas Ralph Merton and Julian Huxley. After graduating from Eton in 1904, he entered University College, London, where he read chemistry under the tutelage of Sir William Ramsay. He graduated in 1908 with first-class honours, and went to Nancy University to perform post-graduate work. He intended to then proceed to Germany, but this was cut short in 1909 by an offer of a position as an instructor at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. His research there was largely devoted to nitrogen oxides, on which he published three papers in 1913 and 1914. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant on 1 July 1909 in University of London contingent of the Officers' Training Corps. Career In 1913 he went to Berlin to work in the laboratory of Walther Nernst. Frederick Lindemann was also there at this time, and the two became friends. During the July Crisis in 1914, Nernst helped Egerton and his wife leave Germany. They arrived back in England on 3 August 1914, the day before Britain declared war on Germany, joining the Great War.