ODLING , WILLIAM

Odling, the son of a London surgeon, studied medicine at London University before moving into chemistry. He studied in Paris under Charles Gerhardt and in 1863 was appointed professor of chemistry at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. In 1867 he succeeded Michael Faraday as Fullerian Professor at the Royal Institution, London, and in 1872 he moved to Oxford University to take up the Waynflete Chair of Chemistry until his retirement in 1912.

Odling was one of the pioneers of the valence theory first propounded by Edward Frankland in 1852. Although the term ‘valence’ was not in use in 1854 when Odling first wrote on the topic, he had a clear idea of the concept, which he referred to as replaceable or representative value. Odling, like many of his contemporaries, was skeptical of the existence of atoms, and it was not until the 1890s that his misgivings were overcome. From his work on atomic weights he was led to suggest that the atomic weight of oxygen should be 16, not 8. In 1861 he was able to clear up a troublesome problem over oxygen by suggesting that ozone was triatomic; this was later confirmed by J. Soret in 1866. Odling also studied and classified silicates.