Grace C. Frankland

Grace Coleridge Frankland known as Mrs Percy Frankland née Grace Toynbee (4 December 1858 – 5 October 1946) was an English microbiologist. She was one of the nineteen female scientists who wrote the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society to request that they should create some female fellows of the society.

Life

She was the youngest of nine children; her parents were Harriet and Joseph Toynbee, a noted otologist. Two of her brothers were the economic historian Arnold Toynbee and the Dante scholar Paget Toynbee. She was home schooled and spent one year at Bedford College.

Toynbee married Percy Frankland in 1882, and with him developed an interest in the emerging science of bacteriology. She worked with both Percy and his father Edward Frankland and was described at the time as having "worthily aided and seconded [Percy]". She co-authored papers with her husband on bacteria and other microorganisms found in the air and water. Colleagues of her husband noted that although their situation as husband and wife working equally together was not unique, he was 'the first man who had the chivalry to admit it.'

Frankland was especially interested in the relationship between bacteria and public health. In 1903 she wrote a popular science book entitled Bacteria in Daily Life. It was written in an open style to engage a wide audience and included important bacterial information pertaining to food, drink, smoking, pollution, sewage, air and disease. The book was reviewed in Nature in 1903.

... an interesting, instructive, and accurate account of the modern developments of bacteriology. Such subjects as sewage disposal, the prevention of tuberculosis, micro-organisms in milk, air, and foods, which are of public importance, are fully dealt with.......No one nowadays laying claim to a liberal education can dispense with a slight knowledge, at least, of microbes and their actions, and for such this work will prove an adequate text-book.