 The following year he was admitted to the Royal School of Mines, where he was taught by his father, Frederick Guthrie, T H Huxley, Judd and Warington Smyth

Although he gained a Brackenbury scholarship to St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1878, and graduated BSc three years later, he was steered away from medicine to chemistry by his father.He studied for a PhD under Wislicenus at the University of Würzburg.Frankland returned to London in 1880, and became a demonstrator of practical chemistry at the Normal School of Science, South Kensington.