William Frankland

Alfred William Frankland MBE (19 March 1912 – 2 April 2020) was a British allergist and immunologist whose achievements included the popularisation of the pollen count as a piece of weather-related information to the British public, speculation regarding the effects of overly sterile living environments, and the prediction of increased levels of allergy to penicillin. He continued to work for a number of years after turning 100. Early life and education Frankland was born in Battle, Sussex, England. His father was Rev. Henry Frankland, of North Yorkshire farming stock, who at the time of his son's birth was curate of St. Mark's, Little Common, near Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, and in later years was a vicar in Cumberland. His mother, Alice (Rose), was the daughter of Henry West, a successful ironmonger of Barnsley. He was born an identical twin; his brother (the elder twin by fifteen minutes), Rev. John Ashlin Frankland, who worked in Sierra Leone in the 1950s, died in 1995 at age 83. They had an elder brother, Basil, who entered the fur trade in Canada, and an elder sister, Ella, who died aged 22 in 1933. Frankland reported that the family doctor was ineffective, and this motivated him to do better himself. Frankland's childhood was spent in the Lake District, and he attended the preparatory school at Rossall School, Carlisle Grammar School, then St Bees School. He subsequently studied medicine at The Queen's College, Oxford, and St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, now part of Imperial College London. Military service