Edward was apprenticed in 1840 to a local pharmacist, Stephen Ross.
With support and encouragement from a local doctor, James Johnson, Frankland acquired in 1845 a place in the Westminster laboratory of Lyon Playfair.
The following year Playfair accepted the additional role of professor at the Putney College of Engineering, and took Frankland with him as lecture assistant.
While there, Frankland encountered another of Playfair's assistants, Hermann Kolbe (1818-1884), with whom he began a lifelong friendship
Kolbe had obtained his PhD at the University of Marburg, a city in Hessen, Germany, on the Lahn river.
In May 1847 the two friends set off on a three month working visit to Marburg.
There he made his first acquaintance with Sophie Fick, whom he was later to marry.
He succeeded Playfair as professor of chemistry in 1850, holding the same position at Owens College, Manchester (1851-57) (later to become Manchester University), and in London at St. Bartholomew's Hospital (1857). Within two years Frankland obtained an additional post, teaching chemistry at the East India Company's military college at Addiscombe. He remained there until the dissolution of the college in 1861. He succeeded Michael Faraday as professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London (1863). In 1865 he began 20 years of service at the Royal School of Mines.
Sophie died from tuberculosis in 1874. Edward subsequently married Ellen Frances Grenside in 1875.
Edward returned to the council of the Royal Society (1875-77) and to his appointment as vice-president (1868-70) and president (1871-2) of the Chemical Society. His efforts led directly, in 1877, to creation of the Institute of Chemistry, the world's first professional organization for scientists. He became its first president.
In 1885 Frankland took early retirement at the age of sixty. He had moved his home to The Yews, a large house on Reigate Hill. Here he established his private laboratory. In 1887 he was made a JP for Reigate. He was awarded the prestigious Copley medal in 1894 by the Royal Society council In the jubilee honours of 1897 was made KCB. He also held honorary doctorates from Oxford and Edinburgh and honorary memberships of over a dozen scientific societies, most of them overseas. He was for many the leading British chemist of the nineteenth century.