George Christou

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George Christou is a British-American chemist, currently the Drago and Distinguished Professor at the University of Florida, previously the Earl Blough Professor at the Indiana University. He is also an Honorary Professor at London Centre for Nanotechnology. [1] His current interests are in bioinorganic chemistry, materials and nanoscale magnets, and supramolecular and cluster chemistry. [2] [3] He was a pioneer of the field of single-molecule magnets and has been a significant figure in inorganic chemistry, with multiple papers each cited over 100 times. He has published over 600 peer-reviewed publications, with an H index of 96, [4] and has been selected to both the Highly Cited Researchers 2014 and 2015 lists. He has received a variety of awards and honours over the years, including the recent American Chemical Society 2019 ACS Award in Inorganic Chemistry, the 2017 SEC Faculty Achievement Award, the 2016 Southern Chemist Award, and the 2016 Nyholm Prize of the UK Royal Society of Chemistry. He was named one of 15 Florida Most Influential Scientists.

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Education

He earned his PhD degree in organic chemistry from Exeter University. He was the NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and Harvard University working with Prof. Richard H. Holm.

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

Ferrimagnetism Type of magnetic phenomenon

A ferrimagnetic material is material that has populations of atoms with opposing magnetic moments, as in antiferromagnetism. For ferrimagnetic materials these moments are unequal in magnitude so a spontaneous magnetization remains. This can for example happen when the populations consist out of different atoms or ions (such as Fe2+ and Fe3+).

Supramolecular chemistry refers to the area of chemistry concerning chemical systems composed of a discrete number of molecules. The strength of the forces responsible for spatial organization of the system range from weak intermolecular forces, electrostatic charge, or hydrogen bonding to strong covalent bonding, provided that the electronic coupling strength remains small relative to the energy parameters of the component. Whereas traditional chemistry concentrates on the covalent bond, supramolecular chemistry examines the weaker and reversible non-covalent interactions between molecules. These forces include hydrogen bonding, metal coordination, hydrophobic forces, van der Waals forces, pi–pi interactions and electrostatic effects.

VSEPR theory Theoretical model used in chemistry

Valence shell electron pair repulsion theory, or VSEPR theory, is a model used in chemistry to predict the geometry of individual molecules from the number of electron pairs surrounding their central atoms. It is also named the Gillespie-Nyholm theory after its two main developers, Ronald Gillespie and Ronald Nyholm. The premise of VSEPR is that the valence electron pairs surrounding an atom tend to repel each other and will, therefore, adopt an arrangement that minimizes this repulsion. This in turn decreases the molecule's energy and increases its stability, which determines the molecular geometry. Gillespie has emphasized that the electron-electron repulsion due to the Pauli exclusion principle is more important in determining molecular geometry than the electrostatic repulsion.

Supramolecular assembly

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A single-molecule magnet (SMM) is a metal-organic compound that has superparamagnetic behavior below a certain blocking temperature at the molecular scale. In this temperature range, a SMM exhibits magnetic hysteresis of purely molecular origin. In contrast to conventional bulk magnets and molecule-based magnets, collective long-range magnetic ordering of magnetic moments is not necessary.

Pi-Stacking (chemistry) Attractive interactions between aromatic rings

In chemistry, pi stacking refers to attractive, noncovalent interactions between aromatic rings, since they contain pi bonds. These interactions are important in nucleobase stacking within DNA and RNA molecules, protein folding, template-directed synthesis, materials science, and molecular recognition, although some research suggests that pi stacking may not be operative in some of these applications. Despite intense experimental and theoretical interest, there is no unified description of the factors that contribute to pi stacking interactions.

Achim Müller

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Sir Ronald Sydney Nyholm was an Australian chemist who was a leading figure in inorganic chemistry in the 1950s and 1960s.

Water cluster Cluster of water molecules held together through hydrogen bonding

In chemistry, a water cluster is a discrete hydrogen bonded assembly or cluster of molecules of water. Many such clusters have been predicted by theoretical models (in silico), and some have been detected experimentally, in various contexts such as ice, and bulk liquid water, in the gas phase, in dilute mixtures with non-polar solvents, and as water of hydration in crystal lattices. The simplest example is the water dimer (H2O)2. On the basis of the two state model proposed by Werner Luck it is suggested that the Raman spectrum for water can be explained on the basis of the presence of free and hydrogen bonded hydrogen bonds. The model Luck has application with spectral method Differential Non-equilibrium Energy Spectrum (DNES) by Anton Antonov.

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Floriana Tuna is a Romanian chemist and a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at The University of Manchester. Her research in general is based on inorganic chemistry and magnetochemistry, specifically on molecular magnetism, EPR spectroscopy and quantum computing.

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References

  1. "Professor George Christou Appointed as Honorary Professor". london.nano.com. Retrieved November 18, 2017.
  2. "George Christou wins Southern Chemist Award". acs.org. January 16, 2017. Retrieved November 18, 2017.
  3. "Nyholm Prize". rsc.org. Retrieved November 18, 2017.
  4. "George Christou" . Retrieved June 9, 2019.