Robert Warington Jr. was the eldest son and second child of the chemist Robert Warington, FRS. After studying chemistry in his father's laboratory and attending lectures by Faraday, Brande, and Hofmann, Robert Warington Jr. became in 1859 an unpaid assistant to Sir John Bennet Lawes at Rothamsted Experimental Station at Harpenden.[1] Warington was from 1862 to 1867 an assistant to the Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester.[3]