Alexandra Slawin

Last updated
Alexandra Martha Zoya Slawin
Born1961 (age 6162)
Alma mater Loughborough University
Imperial College London
Scientific career
Institutions University of St Andrews
Thesis The X-ray crystal structures of organic and inorganic systems  (1997)

Alexandra Martha Zoya Slawin (born 1961) is a British chemist and Professor at the University of St Andrews. Her research looks to understand the structure of supramolecular systems (e.g. rotaxanes and catenanes). She is generally considered as one of the world's leading crystallographers. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2011.

Contents

Early life and education

Slawin studied chemistry at Imperial College London. [1] [2] After earning her bachelor's degree she worked at Imperial as an Experimental Officer on X-ray crystallography. She moved to the Loughborough University, where she completed a PhD on the crystal structures of organic and inorganic systems. [3] She demonstrated how useful single cyrstal X-ray measurements were to better understand the structures of organic and inorganic solid-state systems. [3] Toward the end of her thesis she started to focus on supramolecular chemistry, particularly macrocycles, rotaxanes and catenanes. [3]

Research and career

Slawin joined the University of St Andrews in 1999. [4] She was made a professor in 2004, and serves as Director of the Molecular Structure Lab. Her lab have sophisticated fully automated instrumentation for X-Ray Diffractio, including two rotating anodes and sensitive detectors. [5] She called the system the Standard (St Andrews Automated Robotic Diffractometer), which she commercialised with Rigaku. [6]

Slawin is one of the most frequent contributors to the Cambridge Crystallographic Database, having submitted over 3,500 entries. [7] Slawin was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2011. The Royal Society of Chemistry named her one of their Golden Authors in 2021. [8]

Select publications

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catenane</span> Molecule composed of two or more intertwined rings

In macromolecular chemistry, a catenane is a mechanically interlocked molecular architecture consisting of two or more interlocked macrocycles, i.e. a molecule containing two or more intertwined rings. The interlocked rings cannot be separated without breaking the covalent bonds of the macrocycles. They are conceptually related to other mechanically interlocked molecular architectures, such as rotaxanes, molecular knots or molecular Borromean rings. Recently the terminology "mechanical bond" has been coined that describes the connection between the macrocycles of a catenane. Catenanes have been synthesised in two different ways: statistical synthesis and template-directed synthesis.

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References

  1. "Molecules". www.mdpi.com. Retrieved 2023-03-24.
  2. "Alexandra M. Z. Slawin". Angewandte Chemie International Edition. 52 (34): 8786. 2013-08-19. doi:10.1002/anie.201301619.
  3. 1 2 3 Slawin, Alexandra M. Z. (1997-01-01). The X-ray crystal structures of organic and inorganic systems (thesis thesis). Loughborough University.
  4. Thomas, James (2022-03-08). "The changing nature of research environments". Royal Society of Edinburgh. Retrieved 2023-03-23.
  5. "Prof Alexandra Slawin - School of Chemistry". www.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 2023-03-24.
  6. Ball2010-05-27T09:53:23+01:00, Philip. "Column: The crucible". Chemistry World. Retrieved 2023-03-24.
  7. "CSD Heroes: Alexandra Martha Zoya Slawin | CCDC". www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2023-03-23.
  8. "Celebrating our Golden Authors: Prof. Alexandra Slawin – Dalton Transactions Blog" . Retrieved 2023-03-24.