Lancaster Mechanics' Institute (later to become The Storey, attending classes in a makeshift cottage laboratory made available to local apprentices and other young men by a local doctor, James Johnson. Others in that youthful circle were the scientific writer Robert Galloway (also apprenticed to Ross) and the anatomist William Turner. With support and encouragement from Johnson, Frankland acquired, in 1845, a place in the Westminster laboratory of Lyon Playfair, 1st Baron Playfair. Whilst there, Frankland attended Playfair's lecture course; at the end of it he passed the examination—the only written one he ever sat. In summer 1847 Frankland visited Germany and met some of Playfair's chemistry contacts there, including Robert Bunsen. In August 1847, Frankland accepted a post as science-master at a boarding school (Queenwood College) in Hampshire, but the following summer he opted to return to Germany to be a full-time student at the University of Marburg. Robert Bunsen was an influential teacher at Marburg at the time, and Bunsen's reputation was one of the main attractions for Frankland. The following year Frankland accepted an invitation to move to Justus von Liebig's laboratory at Giessen. By this stage, Frankland already had his own research agenda and had published some original research in chemistry. In January 1850, Lyon Playfair revealed his intention to resign from his professorship at Putney College for Civil Engineers in London and arrange to have Frankland become his successor. Hence Frankland abruptly terminated his studies in Germany and returned to take up Playfair's former position in England. A year later Frankland became professor of chemistry at a newly established school now known as the University of Manchester. In 1857, he became lecturer in chemistry at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, and, in 1863, professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution, London. For two decades Frankland also had a teaching role at the Royal School of Mines in London; and he taught briefly (from 1859 to 1861) at the Royal India Military College at Addiscombe, Surrey. Edward Frankland was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1853 and awarded the Society's Royal Medal in 1857 and its Copley Medal in 1894. He was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1897. Edward Frankland became engaged to Sophie Fick, sister of physiologist Adolf Eugen Fick, from Kassel in October 1849. They had first met on Frankland's 1847 trip. They married on 27 February 1851