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The Department of Chemistry at the University of Manchester is one of the largest departments of Chemistry in the United Kingdom, with over 600 undergraduate and more than 200 postgraduate research students.
The department has comprehensive academic coverage across the chemical sciences and in all the core sub-disciplines of chemistry, with over 120 postdoctoral researchers.
As of 2017 [update] The department employs 34 full-time Professors and 11 Emeritus Professors [1] including:
The School is also home to a number of Emeritus Professors, pursuing their research interests after their formal retirement [1] including:
Manchester has a long and distinguished history of Chemistry. John Dalton founded modern Chemistry in 1803 with his atomic theory. William Henry (1774 – 1836) was a Manchester chemist who developed what is known today as Henry's Law. James Joule pioneered the science of thermodynamics in the 1840s while working in Manchester. In the basement of the Royal Manchester Institution a laboratory was installed by Lyon Playfair who worked there briefly as Professor of Chemistry after he left Thomson's of Clitheroe. [6] He was succeeded by Frederick Crace Calvert who made phenol which was used by Joseph Lister as an antiseptic. [7] Carl Schorlemmer, [8] was appointed the first UK Professor of Organic Chemistry in 1874.
The teaching of chemistry in Owens College began in 1851 in a house in St John Street and was later transferred to the main college building in Quay Street. When the college removed to the present university site in 1873 the chemical laboratory was designed by Henry Roscoe. To this was added in 1895 the Schorlemmer laboratory for organic chemistry and in 1904 three more laboratories were added; these were the Dalton and Perkin laboratories and the Schunck laboratory which was brought from Kersal and rebuilt. The Morley laboratories (1909) provided further accommodation for organic chemistry. [9] In October 1909 Rona Robinson and two other women were arrested for dressing in full academic regalia and interrupting a speech by the chancellor of the university at the celebration of the opening of the new chemical laboratories. They were demanding that the chancellor speak out against the force-feeding of imprisoned suffragette alumni of Manchester who were on hunger strike. The police were particularly rough with the women that day and the chancellor was sufficiently moved by the women's protest to pressure the university into not pressing charges, thus preventing Rona from going to prison again.
After the 2nd World War three more laboratories were built further down Burlington Street; these were the Dixon Laboratory (1946), the Robinson Laboratory (1950) and the Lapworth Laboratory (1950); [10] all three were vacated in the 1960s when the present building in Brunswick Street was available. The architect for the present chemistry building was H. S. Fairhurst & Son. [11]
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Professors at Owens College and the Victoria University of Manchester: [12]
Other distinguished alumni and former staff [13] from the school of Chemistry include:
See also Notable chemists (and biologists) at the University of Manchester
The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named after the British chemist and physicist Henry Cavendish. The laboratory has had a huge influence on research in the disciplines of physics and biology.
Michael Smith was a British-born Canadian biochemist and businessman. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Kary Mullis for his work in developing site-directed mutagenesis. Following a PhD in 1956 from the University of Manchester, he undertook postdoctoral research with Har Gobind Khorana at the British Columbia Research Council in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Subsequently, Smith worked at the Fisheries Research Board of Canada Laboratory in Vancouver before being appointed a professor of biochemistry in the UBC Faculty of Medicine in 1966. Smith's career included roles as the founding director of the UBC Biotechnology Laboratory and the founding scientific leader of the Protein Engineering Network of Centres of Excellence (PENCE). In 1996 he was named Peter Wall Distinguished Professor of Biotechnology. Subsequently, he became the founding director of the Genome Sequencing Centre at the BC Cancer Research Centre.
Alexander Robertus Todd, Baron Todd, was a British biochemist whose research on the structure and synthesis of nucleotides, nucleosides, and nucleotide coenzymes gained him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1957.
Frederic Stanley Kipping FRS was an English chemist. He undertook much of the pioneering work on silicon polymers and coined the term silicone.
Ronald George Wreyford Norrish FRS was a British chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1967.
Raymond Urgel Lemieux, CC, AOE, FRS was a Canadian organic chemist, who pioneered many discoveries in the field of chemistry, his first and most famous being the synthesis of sucrose. His contributions include the discovery of the anomeric effect and the development of general methodologies for the synthesis of saccharides still employed in the area of carbohydrate chemistry. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Society (England), and a recipient of the prestigious Albert Einstein World Award of Science and Wolf Prize in Chemistry.
The Yusuf Hamied 1702 Chair of Chemistry is one of the senior professorships at the University of Cambridge, based in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry.
Sir Robert Robinson was a British organic chemist and Nobel laureate recognised in 1947 for his research on plant dyestuffs (anthocyanins) and alkaloids. In 1947, he also received the Medal of Freedom with Silver Palm.
Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood was a British physical chemist and expert in chemical kinetics. His work in reaction mechanisms earned the 1956 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Michael Szwarc was a British and American polymer chemist who discovered and studied ionic living polymerization.
Arthur Lapworth FRS was a Scottish chemist.
William Henry Perkin Jr., FRS FRSE was an English organic chemist who was primarily known for his groundbreaking research work on the degradation of naturally occurring organic compounds.
The Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester is one of the largest and most active physics departments in the UK, taking around 250 new undergraduates and 50 postgraduates each year, and employing more than 80 members of academic staff and over 100 research fellows and associates. The department is based on two sites: the Schuster Laboratory on Brunswick Street and the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics in Cheshire, international headquarters of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
Wilson Baker FRS was a British organic chemist.
Sir Ewart Ray Herbert Jones FRS was a Welsh organic chemist and academic administrator, whose fields of expertise led him to discoveries into the chemistry of natural products, mainly steroids, terpenes and vitamins. His work also led to the creation of the Jones oxidation.
Ronald Ernest Grigg FRS was a British chemist and Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Leeds.
Alexander Robertson FRS was a British chemist. He was awarded the Davy Medal in 1952 "In recognition of his researches into the chemistry of natural products, particularly the wide range of glycosides, bitter principles and colouring matters containing heterocyclic oxygen atoms". He is known for his organic chemistry research, particularly in the investigation of natural products.
Sir James Baddiley FRS FRSE was a British biochemist.
The Sir Samuel Hall Chair of Chemistry is the named Chair of Chemistry in the School of Chemistry at the University of Manchester, established through an endowment of £36,000 in 1913 by the Hall family. This chair has been occupied by the following chemists:
Ian William Murison Smith was a chemist who served as a research fellow and lecturer in the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge from 1963 to 1985 and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham from 1985 to 2002.