Geoffrey Wilkinson | |
|---|---|
 Wilkinsonc. 1976 | |
| Born | (1921-07-14)14 July 1921 Todmorden,West Riding of Yorkshire, England |
| Died | 26 September 1996(1996-09-26) (aged 75) London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Imperial College London (PhD) |
| Known for | Homogeneoustransition metalcatalysis |
| Awards |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Inorganic chemistry |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Some physico-chemical observations on hydrolysis in the homogeneous vapour phase (1946) |
| Doctoral advisor | Henry Vincent Aird Briscoe[2] |
| Other academic advisors | Glenn T. Seaborg (post doctoral advisor) |
| Doctoral students | |
| Other notable students | Richard A. Andersen (postdoc) |
Sir Geoffrey WilkinsonFRS[1] (14 July 1921 – 26 September 1996) was aNobel laureate Englishchemist who pioneeredinorganic chemistry and homogeneoustransition metalcatalysis.[6][7]
Wilkinson was born at Springside,Todmorden, in theWest Riding of Yorkshire. His father, Henry Wilkinson, was a masterhouse painter and decorator; his mother, Ruth, worked in a localcotton mill. One of his uncles, an organist andchoirmaster, had married into a family that owned a small chemical company makingEpsom andGlauber's salts for thepharmaceutical industry; this is where he first developed an interest in chemistry.
He was educated at the local council primary school and, after winning a County Scholarship in 1932, went toTodmorden Grammar School. Hisphysics teacher there, Luke Sutcliffe, had also taught SirJohn Cockcroft, who received a Nobel Prize for "splitting the atom". In 1939 he obtained a Royal Scholarship for study atImperial College London, from where he graduated in 1941, with his PhD awarded in 1946 entitled "Some physico-chemical observations of hydrolysis in the homogeneous vapour phase".[8][2][9]
In 1942 ProfessorFriedrich Paneth was recruiting young chemists for thenuclear energy project. Wilkinson joined and was sent out to Canada, where he stayed inMontreal and laterChalk River Laboratories until he could leave in 1946. For the next four years he worked with ProfessorGlenn T. Seaborg atUniversity of California, Berkeley, mostly on nuclear taxonomy.[10] He then became a research associate at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology and began to return to his first interest as a student –transition metal complexes ofligands such ascarbon monoxide andolefins.
He was atHarvard University from September 1951 until he returned to England in December 1955, with a sabbatical break of nine months inCopenhagen. At Harvard, he still did some nuclear work on excitation functions forprotons incobalt, but had already begun to work on olefin complexes.
In June 1955 he was appointed to the chair of Inorganic Chemistry atImperial College London, and from then on worked almost entirely on the complexes of transition metals.
Wilkinson is well known for his popularisation of the use ofWilkinson's catalyst RhCl(PPh3)3 in catalytic hydrogenation, and for the discovery of the structure offerrocene. Wilkinson's catalyst is used industrially in thehydrogenation ofalkenes toalkanes.[11][12]
He supervised PhD students and postdoctoral researchers includingF. Albert Cotton,Richard A. Andersen,John A. Osborn,Alan Davison[3][4] andMalcolm Green.[5]
Wilkinson received many awards, including theNobel Prize for Chemistry in 1973[2] for his work on "organometallic compounds" (withErnst Otto Fischer). He is also well known for writing, with his former doctoral studentF. Albert Cotton, "Advanced Inorganic Chemistry", often referred to simply as "Cotton and Wilkinson", one of the standard inorganic chemistry textbooks.[13]
He was elected aFellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1965.[1] In 1980 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of science from theUniversity of Bath. Imperial College London named a new hall of residence after him, which opened in October 2009. Wilkinson Hall is named in his honour.[14]
Wilkinson was married to Lise Schou, a Danish plant physiologist whom he had met at Berkeley. They had two daughters, Anne and Pernille.[1]
