Joseph Kenyon, 1885-1961

Joseph Kenyon was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, on 8 April 1885. His parents, Lawrence and Mary Anne, who were married in 1884, had six other, younger, children, three boys and three girls. Mrs Lawrence Kenyon’s maiden name was Southwarth. Joseph’s education began at the Primary School of St Barnabas in Blackburn. He was there from 1890 to 1897, and then went to the Secondary, Higher Grade School, in the same town for two years. On leaving school he became a Laboratory Assistant in the Municipal Technical School, Blackburn. He occupied this post from 1900 to 1903, and attended evening classes in the Technical School from 1898 to 1906, studying chemistry (first under Dr Conrad Gerland and later under Dr R. H. Pickard), physics, mathematics, Latin and shorthand. He passed London Matriculation in the first class, in 1903, and was awarded the ‘John Mercer, F.R.S. Scholarship’, which enabled him to continue his undergraduate studies until 1905, as a full-time student. In 1904 he passed the London Intermediate Science Examination and became Private Assistant to Pickard in his capacity as Corporation Chemist and consultant to several cotton mills. Kenyon was appointed as Assistant Lecturer and Demonstrator in the Municipal Technical School in 1906, and was promoted to Lecturer and Demonstrator in the following year. He carried out some researches whilst an undergraduate, publishing three papers with Pickard, two on ‘The chemistry of oxygen compounds’ and the other which became a classic, on ‘The resolution ofsec. octyl alcohol’.