Frank George Young, 25 March 1908 - 20 September 1988

Abstract

Frank Young was born in the London Borough of Clerkenwell at 2 Bond Street, Holford Square, an area of fine Georgian Houses destroyed in the 1939-45 war. His parents were Frank Edgar Young and Jessie Eleanor Young (formerly Pinkney). His father was a solicitor’s clerk and a fastidious and somewhat severe man. Frank had a younger brother Eric, born in 1912, and a sister Margaret, born in 1925. Eric was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, made a career in the Diplomatic Service and as a recreation studied and published on art and history becoming an authority on Spanish painting. In 1912 the family moved to Dulwich where Frank and Eric were educated at Alleyn’s School. As a schoolboy Frank became interested in chemistry through reading about the subject in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica . He comments that at this stage his interest owed more to fascination than to understanding. He extended his knowledge by reading the standard Victorian textbooks, given to him by neighbours who had been school science teachers. He also became interested in archaeology and Egyptology through articles in the encyclopedia and elsewhere; and later through a friend in Dulwich (Gerald Lankester Harding) who had been appointed to assist Flinders Petrie in his archaeological researches in Egypt. Frank was to retain this interest as an undergraduate at University College because Flinders Petrie and Lankester Harding were based there when in England.