Robert Mond

British chemist and archaeologist

Sir Robert Ludwig Mond, FRS, FRSE (9 September 1867 – 22 October 1938) was a British chemist and archaeologist.

Mond was born at Farnworth, Widnes, Lancashire, the elder son of Ludwig Mond, a chemist and industrialist. He was educated at Cheltenham College, Peterhouse, Cambridge (BA 1888, MA 1892), Zurich Polytechnic, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow. At Glasgow he studied under William Thomson.

Mond collaborated with his father in the discovery of the gaseous compound nickel carbonyl. He perfected the industrial production of iron carbonyl, and discovered the first derivative of a metallic carbonyl (cobalt nitroso carbonyl) and a new ruthenium carbonyl. For a time he made trials of scientific farming. Following his father's heritage he became a director of Brunner Mond & Company and because of a connection with nickel mines in Canada he was a trustee of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. and was awarded the Messel medal of the Society of Chemical Industry. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Fellow of the Royal Society. In France he became Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur and a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, thereby joining the Institut de France. He was elected president of the Société de Chimie.

Robert Mond married twice. In 1898 he married Helen Levis and they had two daughters but Helen died in 1905, following the birth of their second daughter in 1901. In her memory Mond founded the Infants' Hospital in Vincent Square, London. In 1922 he married Marie Louise Guggenheim (née Le Manac'h) of Belle Île en Terre, Brittany and following this spent more of his life in France. He died in Paris and was cremated at the Père Lachaise Crematorium and his ashes were buried at his home at Belle Île en Terre in Brittany.