Abstract
David Leonard Chapman was born in Wells, Norfolk on 6 December 1869, and died on 17 January 1958. His father, David, was a none-too-successful builder in Manchester; his mother, Maria Wells, came from a family with a well-established malting business in Wells, and her mother was a friend of Lady Nelson. She possessed a strong Victorian character, and was determined that David, the eldest son, and his brother Sydney (afterwards Sir Sydney Chapman, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Manchester) should have opportunities of education. She sent them first to an old- fashioned dame’s school and afterwards to Manchester Grammar School. Here he was taught by Francis Jones, and in writing his obituary in 1926 Chapman states Jones started his work at the Manchester Grammar School in 1872, during the period of a great scientific awakening when popular science lectures attracted large audiences in the chief industrial centres. Nevertheless, science was considered to be rather vulgar by many of the educated classes. It was fourteen years later that the writer, in opposition to the wishes of the High Master, entered the Science V, the refuge of the incorrigibly stupid. The High Master in giving his consent uttered the warning that his (the writer’s) chance of becoming a well-educated man would thereby be lost.’ In due course Chapman won an Open Exhibition at Christ Church, Oxford, and was placed in the First Class of the Final Honour School of Natural Science (Chemistry) in 1893. In the following year he was awarded a Second Class for Physics in the same Final School. He then took a post as science master at Giggleswick, but was soon picked by Professor H. B. Dixon to be a member of the staff at the University of Manchester, where he spent the next ten years. In 1907 he accepted a Fellowship at Jesus College, Oxford, with the responsibility of arranging the equipment of the new College laboratories named after Sir Leoline Jenkins. He remained as College tutor with charge of the laboratories until his retirement in 1944.