The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is a learned society and professional association in the United Kingdom with the goal of "advancing the chemical sciences". It was formed in 1980 from the amalgamation of the Chemical Society, the Royal Institute of Chemistry, the Faraday Society, and the Society for Analytical Chemistry with a new Royal Charter and the dual role of learned society and professional body. At its inception, the Society had a combined membership of 49,000 in the world.
Lt-Col Edward Frank Harrison C.M.G. (1869–1918) was an English chemical scientist, credited with the invention of the first serviceable gas mask during the First World War. Born in Camberwell, Harrison, at the age of 14, was apprenticed to a pharmacist, at the end of which he was awarded the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Jacob Bell Scholarship. As a student, he was awarded medals in chemistry, botany and materia medica. He qualified as a pharmaceutical chemist in 1891, becoming a demonstrator in the Society's laboratory and school. He later became head of the analytical laboratory at Burroughs Wellcome, and assisted in the compilation of the British Pharmaceutical Codex.
The Meldola Medal and Prize was awarded annually from 1921 to 1979 by the Chemical Society and from 1980 to 2008 by the Royal Society of Chemistry to a British chemist who was under 32 years of age for promising original investigations in chemistry. It commemorated Raphael Meldola, President of the Maccabaeans and the Institute of Chemistry. The prize was the sum of £500 and a bronze medal.
Howard Colquhoun is Emeritus Professor of Materials Chemistry in the University of Reading. He was born (1951) in County Durham and was educated at Washington Grammar School and at the University of Cambridge. In 1972 he moved to the University of London as a research student in chemistry. At Cambridge he was a member of the University athletics team and was awarded a half-blue for throwing the discus. He carried out postdoctoral work at the University of Warwick, and was then a researcher at the ICI Corporate Laboratory in Cheshire where he and Fraser Stoddart developed a successful collaboration. In 1994 he moved to Manchester University as a Royal Society Industry Fellow. From 1997 he was Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Salford. In 2000 he was appointed to the Chair of Materials Chemistry in the University of Reading where, from 2002 to 2006, he served as Head of the School of Chemistry. In 2007 he was elected a Visiting Fellow of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. His research has contributed to the fields of silicon chemistry, boron chemistry, transition-metal chemistry, dinitrogen chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, polymer chemistry and fractal chemistry, resulting in two books and some 250 other publications. Awards for his work include the RSC Medal and Prize for Materials Chemistry (2005), the degree of Doctor of Science (ScD) of the University of Cambridge (2008), the Wilsmore Fellowship of the University of Melbourne (2007), the Macro Group UK Medal for contributions to polymer science (2012), and the "Leverhulme" Senior Research Fellowship of the Royal Society (2006). He retired from Reading at the end of 2018, becoming Professor Emeritus.
The Edward Harrison Memorial Prize was awarded from 1926 to 1979 by the Chemical Society and from 1980 to 2007 by its successor the Royal Society of Chemistry to a British chemist who was under 32 years of age, and working the fields of theoretical or physical chemistry. It commemorated the work of Edward Harrison who was credited with producing the first serviceable gas mask and whose work saved many lives.
Dame Molly Morag Stevens is the John Black Professor of Bionanoscience at the University of Oxford's Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics. She is Deputy Director of the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery and a member of the Department for Engineering Science and the Institute for Biomedical Engineering.
John Paul Attfield is a British chemist who is Professor of Materials science in the School of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh and Director of the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions (CSEC).
Robert Paton won the 2015 Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize awarded by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Up to three Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prizes are awarded each year. Paton received the OpenEye Outstanding Junior Faculty Award from the American Chemical Society COMP division in fall 2015.
Susan Elizabeth Gibson is a British research chemist, Professor and Chair in Chemistry and Director of the Graduate School at Imperial College London. Gibson is an expert in chemical synthesis and catalysis.
James Robert DurrantFRSC FLSW is a British photochemist. He is a professor of photochemistry at Imperial College London and Sêr Cymru Solar Professor at Swansea University. He serves as director of the centre for plastic electronics (CPE).
Eva Hevia is a Professor of Organometallic Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow and Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, the University of Bern.
Charlotte Williams is a British scientist who holds the Professorship of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the synthesis of novel catalysts with an expertise in organometallic chemistry and polymer materials chemistry.
Rachel O'Reilly is a British chemist and Professor at the University of Birmingham. She works at the interface of biology and materials, creating polymers that can mimic natural nanomaterials such as viruses and cells. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and of the Royal Society.
Kim E. Jelfs is a computational chemist based at Imperial College London who was one of the recipients of the Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prizes in 2018. She develops software to predict the structures and properties of molecular systems for renewable energy.
Rebecca Jane Miriam Goss is a British organic chemist and professor at the University of St. Andrews recognized for her contributions to discovering and engineering biosynthesis of natural products, particularly anti-infectives, through the integration of synthetic biology and chemistry. Among other achievements and awards, Dr. Goss won the 2006 Royal Society of Chemistry Meldola Medal.
Helen H. Fielding is a Professor of physical chemistry at University College London (UCL). She focuses on ultrafast transient spectroscopy of protein chromophores and molecules. She was the first woman to win the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize (1996) and Marlow Award (2001).
Andrew L. GoodwinFRS is a university research professor and professor of materials chemistry at the University of Oxford.
Matthew John Fuchter is a British chemist who is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the development and application of novel functional molecular systems to a broad range of areas; from materials to medicine. He has been awarded both the Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize (2014) and the Corday–Morgan Prizes (2021) of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2020 he was a finalist for the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists.
Aron Walsh is a chemist known for his research in the fields of computational chemistry and materials science.
