He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1860 and received their Royal Medal in 1887. He was president of the Chemical Society (1875–7), of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (then the Society of Telegraph Engineers) (1877), of the Institute of Chemistry (1881–2) and of the Society of Chemical Industry (1883). He was also president of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1891 and was awarded the Bessemer Gold Medal in 1897 for his work on problems of steel manufacture. He was awarded the Telford Medal by the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1879.