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Eric Rideal was born the son of Samuel Rideal, a public analyst and consulting chemist, and Elizabeth at Sydenham, Kent. He was educated at Farnham Grammar School and Oundle School as a child. In 1907 he entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge to read natural sciences. In 1910 he gained first class honours in part one of the Tripos, and subsequently gained first class honours in part two of the Tripos in 1911. A lecturer at Cambridge, Sir William Bate Hardy, steered Eric Rideal into studying surface chemistry. This resulted in him researching at Aachen and Bonn, Germany. He studied electrochemistry and graduated in 1912 and in 1913 he gained the gold medal of the Bonn Society of Engineers for his research. He returned to Westminster, England and in 1914, he worked with war supplies. He was under the Artists' Rifles and moved on to the Royal Engineers as Captain. He was invalided in 1916 and returned to scientific research namely nitrogen research at the University College London laboratory. In 1919 he co-wrote Catalysis in Theory and Practice with H. S. Taylor. He was a visiting professor of the University of Illinois in 1919 and in 1921, he married Margaret Atlee, widow of William Agnew Paton. In 1930 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. He also became Professor of Colloid Physics (later Colloid Science) at Cambridge University in 1930, a position he held until 1946. During this period he worked on electrochemistry, heterogeneous catalysis, colloid and surface chemistry and kinetics spectroscopy. From 1939-1945 he worked on explosives, fuels and polymers for the war effort of the Second World War. In 1946 he became Fullerian Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory at The Royal Institution of Great Britain (RI). He left the RI in 1949 and became Professor of Chemistry at King's College London in 1950, retiring in 1955. In 1951 he was knighted and also gained the Davy medal of the Royal Society. From 1953 to 1958, he was Chairman of the Advisory Council on Scientific Research and the Technical Development of the Ministry of Supply. He was elected a Fellow of King's College London in 1963. He died in a nursing home in London in 1974.