Albert Ernest Alexander
(1914-1970) professor of chemistry
Albert Ernest Alexander (1914–1970) was a British-Australian chemist known for his pioneering work with colloids.
Biography
Albert Ernest Alexander was born on 5 January 1914 in Ringwood, Hampshire, the sixth of seven children of William Albert Alexander, a master builder, and Beatrice (née Daw), formerly a teacher. He attended Brockenhurst County School, from where he gained a place in 1931 at the University of Reading. He graduated in 1934 with First Class Honours in Chemistry and an Open Scholarship to King's College, Cambridge. He was awarded a First Class in the Tripos Examination.
With the benefit of a King's College Senior Scholarship, a Department of Scientific and Industrial Research grant for research, and a Ramsay Memorial Fellowship, Alexander joined the Department of Colloid Science to work under Professor E K Rideal (later Sir Eric Keightley Rideal, MBE, FRS). He began with work on the orientation in films of long-chain esters and continued by examining porphyrins, chlorophylls and other molecules, with and without metals.
Alexander was awarded his PhD in 1938, and then went hitch-hiking in Scandinavia with his friend from Cambridge F S Dainton. During their holiday they visited Theodor Svedberg's laboratory in Uppsala in August 1938, after which Alexander decided he would like to spend as much time as he could working with Torsten Teorell in Uppsala. He started at the Institute of Medical Chemistry in December 1938, but had to return to England at the outbreak of war in September 1939.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21535209. VIAF identifies the subject as 65511870. The Library of Congress control number is n86864184. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1914, 1970, 1931 and 1934.
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This entry incorporates text from “Albert Ernest Alexander” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.