Tristram Chivers

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Tristram Chivers
Born (1940-08-22) August 22, 1940 (age 84)
CitizenshipUnited Kingdom and Canada
Alma mater Durham University (BSc, PhD)
Scientific career
Fields Inorganic chemistry
Institutions University of Calgary
Thesis Some pentafluorophenyl derivatives of tin and boron  (1964)
Doctoral advisor Richard Dickinson Chambers

Tristram Chivers FRSC (born 22 August 1940) is a British-Canadian chemist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary. His main research interest is the inorganic chemistry of the main group elements, particularly boron, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, selenium, and tellurium. [1]

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Chivers was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1991 and has been described as the 'godfather' of main group chemistry in Canada. [2] [3]

Early life and education

Chivers was born in Bath, Somerset and attended Colston's School in Bristol. He graduated from Durham University in 1961 with a first-class degree in chemistry. [2] He stayed on at Durham for doctoral studies, and completed his PhD in 1964 under the supervision of R. D. Chambers. [2] [4]

Career and research

After brief periods as a postdoc at the University of Cincinnati and as a tutorial fellow at the University of Sussex, he moved permanently to Canada in 1967 and joined the University of British Columbia as a teaching post-doctoral fellow. He was hired by the University of Calgary in 1969 as Assistant Professor, and was promoted to Professor in 1978. [5] [2]

At Calgary, Chivers and his colleagues made 'notable contributions' to the chemistry of chalcogen compounds. One early finding was to identify the blue species formed by sulfur in reducing media as the trisulfur radical anion, subsequently shown by Robin Clark to be the blue chromophore in the mineral lapis lazuli. [2] Several ring and cage compounds discovered by Chivers and his collaborators are now 'textbook examples' – the 1998 edition of Chemistry of the Elements by Norman Greenwood and Alan Earnshaw features twelve pages on sulfur–nitrogen chemistry research from his laboratory. [2]

He was Senior Editor of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry (1993–1998) and later served as President of the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) (2000–2001). [2]

Selected publications

Books

Journal articles

References

  1. "Tristram Chivers". University of Calgary. Retrieved 23 May 2025.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Burford, Neil (November 2002). "This special issue is dedicated to Professor Tristram Chivers". Canadian Journal of Chemistry. 80 (11): x–xiv. doi:10.1139/v02-904.
  3. "Chivers, Dr. Tristram". ASTech Awards. ASTech Foundation. Retrieved 23 May 2025.
  4. Chivers, Tristram (1964). Some pentafluorophenyl derivatives of tin and boron (PDF) (PhD thesis). Durham University. Retrieved 21 May 2025.
  5. "Meet the donors". University of Calgary. 30 August 2024. Retrieved 23 May 2025.