Frederick Augustus Abel, 1st Baronet (July 17, 1827 - September 6, 1902) was an English chemist and authority on explosives. During his tenure as chemist to the War Department he carried out a large amount of work in connection with the chemistry of explosives. One of the most important of his investigations had to do with the manufacture of guncotton. He developed a process, consisting essentially of reducing the nitrated cotton to fine pulp, which enabled it to be safely manufactured. This work prepared the way for the smokeless powders which came into general use towards the end of the 19th century. At the request of the British government, he devised the Abel test, a means of determining the flash point of petroleum products. He studied the construction of electrical fuses and other applications of electricity to warlike purposes, and his work on problems of steel manufacture won him in 1897 the Bessemer medal of the Iron and Steel Institute. He was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in 1901. He died in 1902 at the age of 75.