News

Royal Society Prize for Excellence

(21 July 2004)

Dr Michael Crampton, Reader in Chemistry at the University of Durham, has been awarded the 2004 Josef Loschmidt Prize for Excellence in Physical Organic Chemistry by the Royal Society for Chemistry.

Dr Crampton, who is recovering from a hip fracture, was unable to attend the RSC�s annual prize giving ceremony to collect the prize of £2,000 on the RSC�s Faraday Division.

The Josef Loschmidt Prize is awarded biennially for excellence in physical organic chemistry, broadly construed to embrace organic structures, reactivity and reaction mechanisms.

Dr. Crampton received an excellent training in chemistry at the University of London, King�s College, where he was awarded a B.Sc. (1962) and Ph.D. (1965). His graduate research included studies of the interactions of aromatic nitro-compounds with bases, an area which he later developed.

He was appointed Lecturer at Durham in 1965 and received his D.Sc. (London) in 1976 and became Reader in 1990. In 1970 he spent a productive year at Brandeis University, Mass. U.S.A. working on the kinetics of ion-pair exchange reactions. He spent the summer of 2000 as a visiting academic with F. Terrier at University of Versailles, France.

His research has involved the application of kinetic, spectroscopic and synthetic methods to a wide range of reactions, with a particular interest in rapid reactions in solution. An enduring interest had been in quantitative study of nucleophile reactivity particularly in reactions to aromatic compounds.

The RSC is the largest organisation in Europe for the advancement of chemical sciences and it plays a leading role in communication cutting edge research and its applications through highly respected journals and its programme of international conferences, seminars and workshops.

Achievements in the chemical sciences are recognised by offering more than 40 endowed lectureships, medals and awards to those scientists who have made significant contributions to the advancement of a field of research.