John Meurig Thomas
Sir John Meurig Thomas (* December 15, 1932 ), is a leading British chemist in the field of heterogeneous catalysis, solid state chemistry, materials science and surface chemistry. Thomas has over a thousand scientific articles and several books written. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary doctorates. In 1991 he was appointed Knight " for services to chemistry and the popularisation of science". The mineral Meurigit is named after him. Many of his research focuses on new heterogeneous catalysts and trying to understand the structure and function of existing systems using techniques such as X-ray absorption spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. He is one of the most cited authors in the field of heterogeneous catalysis. In recent years he has focused his research on the development of " green" catalysts for new technologies and focused on developing ways of studying catalysts under reaction conditions.
Life and work
Thomas was born near the Welsh mining town of Llanelli, South Wales. He studied chemistry at the University of Wales, Swansea, where he received his PhD in the group of Keble Sykes. After graduation, he worked briefly at the UK Atomic Energy Authority before embarking on an academic career at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Wales. He could show that voids and other structural disturbances on surfaces affect the electronic structures.
In 1969 he became a professor at Aberystwyth University, where he put his research focuses on the study of surfaces and materials science. He also explored the application of electron microscopy in chemistry. In 1977 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Between 1979 and 1986 Sir John was Head of Institute, Institute of Physical Chemistry and Professorial Fellow at King's College, where he continues to introduce new techniques in the field of solid state chemistry. Another branch has been the development of new materials and the design of new catalysts. He extended his early electron microscopic studies on intercalation compounds and minerals. Zeolitic materials he examined with techniques such as solid-state NMR, neutron scattering and real space method.
In 1986 he succeeded Sir George Porter as Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London. His research focus has shifted to the investigation of active sites under reaction conditions. He also synthesized a new nano - and mesoporous materials and molecular sieves. He joined in 1991 because of health problems of his wife from this post back. After a short time at the University of Wales, he returned to Cambridge, where he in 1993 Master of Peterhouse, the oldest college in Cambridge, was.
Thomas holds 25 patents, and developed a solvent-free, catalytic processes for the production of ethyl acetate and caprolactam.
Thomas was awarded twenty honorary doctorates from Australian, British, Canadian, Chinese, Dutch, Egyptian, French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and U.S. universities. He is also an honorary member of more than fifteen foreign academies, including the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Accademia dei Lincei (Rome) and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
His recent awards include the Bragg -Price Lectureship of the British Association Crystallographic ( 2010), Sven Berggren Prize Lectureship, Lund (2010), the Ertl Prize Lectureship of the Max Planck Society ( 2010), Sir George Stokes Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2005), the Giulio Natta Gold Medal of the Società Chimica Italiana (2004), the Linus Pauling Gold Medal from Stanford University ( 2003) and the American Chemical Society Annual Award for Creative research in Heterogeneous and Homogeneous catalysis (1999 ). He has won the Davy Medal of the Royal Society and the Faradayvorlesung and the associated price and the Corday - Morgan Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 1995, he became the first British scientist for 80 years, the Willard Gibbs Gold Medal of the American Chemical Society was awarded. In recognition of his contributions to the geochemistry of the International Mineralogical Association in 1995 named a new mineral, Meurigite, according to him.
Together with Gabor A. Somorjai and Norbert Kruse John M. Thomas publishes the journal Catalysis Letters.