Abstract
COLONEL SIR FREDERIC LEWIS NATHAN died on December 10 at the age of seventy-two years. As a young artillery officer who had passed through the advanced class of the Ordnance College, Capt. F. L. Nathan, as he was then, was detailed to take part in with experimental work of Abel, Dewar and Kellner, who were bringing out at Woolwich the smokeless propellant cordite. He was thus at the birth of that explosive, to the improvement and manufacture of which he was to devote his energies between 1892 and 1909 at the Royal Gunpowder Factory, Waltham Abbey, as Assistant and then as Superintendent. During these years it can fairly be said that a new technique was introduced into the manufacture of explosives. The methods of Waltham Abbey were adopted by the then numerous private firms making explosives, while later the propellant factories erected during the War embodied the features of Waltham Abbey practice.
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ROBERTSON, R. Sir Frederic Nathan, K.B.E. Nature 133, 55 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133055a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133055a0