Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 18.djvu/410

 subject he printed for private circulation (1881) ‘A Letter to the Rev. Philip Schaff, D.D., President of the American Committee on Revision.’

Field collected a very valuable library of books connected with biblical, classical, and general literature, which were sold by auction at Norwich for a very inadequate sum. It is believed that he left behind him no manuscripts of importance. A brass tablet to his memory was put up by his only surviving sister in Reepham Church, and another in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Latin inscription on the latter was written by the master, Dr. William H. Thompson.

Field's other works (printed at his own expense but not published) were a volume of thirty-two sermons, 1878; a second part of the ‘Otium Norvicense,’ 1876, containing critical observations on some of the words in Dr. Payne Smith's ‘Thesaurus Syriacus;’ and a third part, 1881, containing ‘Notes on Select Passages of the Greek Testament, chiefly with reference to recent English Versions.’ All of these are favourable specimens of his learning and critical acumen, even if they are not all equally convincing; but one deserves especial notice. He claims to have been the first person to revive (in 1839) the ancient explanation of the true reading in St. Mark's Gospel, vii. 19, katharizōn for katharizon, which, after remaining almost unnoticed for about forty years, was adopted without even any marginal variation in the revised version of 1881. This third part of the ‘Otium Norvicense’ is about to be published shortly at the Oxford Clarendon Press. He edited for the Christian Knowledge Society Barrow's ‘Treatise on the Pope's Supremacy,’ 1851; a Greek Psalter, 1857; and the Septuagint, 1879, not a critical edition, nor on his own plan, but a revision of Grabe's text, with the order of the books changed in accordance with the English Bible, and with the apocryphal books separated from the canonical.

[Autobiography in Preface to Origen; F. Bateman in the Eastern Daily Press, 23 April 1885; W. Aldis Wright in the Cambridge Review, 6 May 1885; private information.]  FIELD, FREDERICK (1826–1885), chemist, born in Lambeth on 2 Aug. 1826, was the second son, by his second wife, of Charles Field, of the firm of J. C. & J. Field, candle-manufacturers, &c. Educated at Denmark Hill grammar school and at Mr. Long's school at Stockwell (where he was a schoolfellow of Professor Odling), Field showed so strong a liking for chemistry that on leaving school in 1843 he was placed in the laboratory of the Polytechnic Institution, then conducted by Dr. Ryan. On leaving the Polytechnic, Field entered into partnership with a chemist named Mitchell as an assayer and consulting chemist, but finding the need of further training spent some time as a student under Dr. Hoffmann in the Royal College of Chemistry in Oxford Street.

Field was one of the original members of the Chemical Society of London, started in 1846, and he read his first paper to that society in the following year (Memoirs Chem. Soc. iii. 404–11). In 1848 he accepted the post of chemist to some copper-smelting works at Coquimbo in Chili. Some account of his work there is contained in his papers in the ‘Journal of the Chemical Society’ for 1850, ‘On the Examination of some Slags from Copper-smelting Furnaces,’ and ‘On the Ashes of the Cactus-plant,’ from which large quantities of carbonate of soda were obtained. In 1851 Field described a natural alloy of silver and copper, which had the appearance of nearly pure silver, and also discovered that a certain ore which occurred in large quantities near Coquimbo was in reality pure lapis lazuli, the first found in South America.

In 1852 Field was appointed manager of his company's works at Caldera, a new port to the north of Coquimbo. Before assuming this position he visited England and married a sister of (Sir) Frederick Abel, returning to Caldera in 1853, of which he was now appointed vice-consul. The post involved many responsibilities in a land subject to revolutions. During the Russian war Field also acted as the representative of France in that district.

In 1856 Field became chemist and sub-manager to the smelting works then established by Señor Urmeneta at Guayacan, which have since become one of the largest copper-smelting works in the world. In 1859 a revolution broke out in Chili. Field sent his wife and family to England, but himself remained and succeeded in preserving the establishment from injury. In September 1859 he finally quitted Chili for England. Soon after his arrival in London he was appointed lecturer on chemistry to St. Mary's Hospital (1860), and in 1862 became professor of chemistry in the London Institution. In the same year he was appointed chemist to the aniline colour works of Simpson, Maule, & Nicholson, a post which he held till 1866, when he became a partner in the old firm of his family—Messrs. J. C. & J. Field—in which he remained and of which he was senior partner at the time of his death. In 1876 Field's health began to fail, and after a long illness he died on 3 April 1885.

Field wrote forty-three papers on 