George Porter
George Porter, Baron Porter of Luddenham (December 6, 1920 in Stainforth, South Yorkshire, † August 31 2002 in Canterbury ) was an English chemist, Nobel laureate and politicians.
Life and work
Porter went to the Grammar School in Thorne Thorne in Doncaster, South Yorkshire (now Trinity Academy ) and then got a scholarship to the University of Leeds, where he received his bachelor's degree in chemistry. He then served during the Second World War in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.
Porter worked under Ronald Norrish as a researcher at the University of Cambridge. He developed a flash photolysis -mentioned method to obtain information about short-lived molecules that provided the first evidence of free radicals. Later he used this method to study the intricacies of the light reactions in photosynthesis, particularly with respect to applications in the hydrogen economy, which he advocated pronounced.
He was 1953-54 Assistant Director of the British Rayon Research Association, in which he explored the image synthesis of dyed cellulosic materials in the sunlight. The Royal Society of Chemistry awarded him the 1955 Corday - Morgan Medal.
Porter 1966 Fullerian Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Royal Institution. Under his leadership the company for Applied Photophysics was established at the Royal Institution, which produced instruments on the basis of research results. In 1967, Manfred Eigen, R. Norrish and he awarded " for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, which are triggered by destruction of the balance by very short pulses of energy " with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. In the same year he accepted a position as Visiting Professor at University College London.
In 1960 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1971 and won the Davy Medal in 1971. Porter was in 1976 awarded the Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science and in 1978 received the Rumford Medal. He read 1978 Romanes Lecture, entitled "Science and the human purpose" at the University of Oxford. He was President of the British Association in 1985 and was a founding member and Chairman of the Chair of the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science ( Copus ). He was also a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina - National Academy of Sciences.
He received in 1991 the Ellison - Cliffe Medal and 1992 the Copley medal. In 1972 he was beaten as a Knight Bachelor knighted. He was 1985-1990 President of the Royal Society. In 1990 he was appointed as Baron Porter of Luddenham, of Luddenham in the County of Kent Life Peer. In 1995 he received an honorary doctorate in law from the University of Bath.
In 1988 he read Richard Dimbleby Lecture " Knowledge Itself is power ". From 1990 to 1993 he read the Gresham lectures in astronomy. He was 1984-95 Chancellor of the University of Leicester. In 2001, the chemistry building of the University was named in his honor George Porter Building.