Russell was born at
Frampton-on-Severn,
Gloucestershire, the eldest son of the Reverend Edward T. Russell who had worked earlier as a schoolmaster. In 1885 he studied at Birmingham where the family moved before relocating the next year to London. He was educated at Carmarthen Presbyterian College;
University College of Wales, Aberystwyth; the
Victoria University of Manchester, and in 1902 earned his
Doctor of Science in chemistry from the
University of London. He was knighted in 1922. In 1920 he wrote the obituary of chemist
Percival Spencer Umfreville Pickering. Russell was president of the
British Association for 1948–1949. He married Elnor Oldham of Manchester in 1903 and they had six children of whom one son, Walter, became a soil physicist at Rothamsted. He is buried, with his wife, in the churchyard of
St Nicholas in Harpenden. == Books ==