A Celebration of Inorganic Chemistry

On June 1^st, the Royal Society of Chemistry Dalton Division and the School of Chemistry co-hosted a symposium entitled “A Celebration of Inorganic Chemistry” to mark the 70^th birthday of Professor Dave Garner, Professor Emeritus in the School of Chemistry and a past President of both the Royal Society of Chemistry and its Dalton Division. Dave Garner’s research has been concerned with several aspects of Inorganic Chemistry, notably the role of d-transition metals in biological systems, and this symposium reflected these interests. Also, Dave has a strong connection to each of the seven speakers, notably because of their common research interests.

Programme:

• Professor George Christou (University of Florida) Manganese Carboxylate Chemistry: a Crossroads of Magnetic, Bioinorganic, and Supramolecular Chemistry
• Professor David Collison (University of Manchester) Magnetized molecules: spin and orbit interactions
• Dr. Mark Murrie (University of Glasgow) Adventures in high-nuclearity spin cluster chemistry
• Professor Peter Tasker (University of Edinburgh) Outer-sphere coordination chemistry; new tricks with old ligands
• Dr. Jon McMaster (University of Nottingham) Transition metal - thiolate chemistry in biology
• Professor Karl Wieghardt (Max Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry, Mülheim) Terpyridine: a Redox-active Ligand
• Sir Jesse Boot Lecture for 2012, Professor Harry Gray (California Institute of Technology) The 21st Century Solar Army

The symposium was introduced by Professor Martin Schröder (Dean of the Faculty of Science and Professor and Head of Inorganic Chemistry) and chaired Professor Lesley Yellowlees (Vice-Principal and Head of the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Edinburgh and President of the Royal Society of Chemistry) and Professor Jim Turner (Emeritus Professor of the University of Nottingham).

Early in the development of his scientific career Dave Garner undertook research with Professor Harry Gray at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. Professor Gray is the Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry and Founding Director of the Beckman Institute at Caltech. In 2004, Gray won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work in bioinorganic chemistry, unraveling novel principles of structure and long-range electron transfer in proteins and his contribution to the symposium was to present the University’s prestigious Sir Jesse Boot Lecture for 2012.

The day was a great success. Each lecturer gave an interesting and informative account of the recent exciting developments that they had accomplished. In particular, Professor Gray captivated the audience as he described recent developments in the capture of energy from sunlight and the involvement of a large number of high school students across the USA (the “Solar Army”) in screening combinations of metal oxides in an attempt to produce cheap, non-toxic, readily available compounds that can mimic photosynthesis and split water into hydrogen and oxygen.