Class
| • | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Lord Martin Rees | | | Institution: | University of Cambridge | | | Year Elected: | 1993 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1942 | | | | | | |
Martin Rees is Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. He holds the honorary title of Astronomer Royal and also Visiting Professor at Imperial College London and at Leicester University. After studying at the University of Cambridge, he held post-doctoral positions in the UK and the USA, before becoming a professor at Sussex University. In 1973, he became a fellow of King's College and Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge (continuing in the latter post until 1991) and served for ten years as director of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy. From 1992 to 2003 he was a Royal Society Research Professor. He is a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy, and several other foreign academies. His awards include the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Balzan International Prize, the Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the Heineman Prize for Astrophysics (AAS/AIP), the Bower Award for Science of the Franklin Institute, the Cosmology Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation, the Einstein Award of the World Cultural Council, the Crafoord Prize (Royal Swedish Academy), the Lewis Thomas Prize (2009) from Rockefeller University in recognition of his book Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe (2000), the 2011 Templeton Prize, and the 2012 Isaac Newton medal of the Institute of Physics. He has been president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1994-95) and the Royal Astronomical Society (1992-94) and a trustee of the British Museum, NESTA and the Kennedy Memorial Trust. He is currently on the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of Science and Industry the Institute for Public Policy Research, and the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, and has served on many bodies connected with education, space research, arms control and international collaboration in science. In 2005 he was appointed to the House of Lords and elected President of the Royal Society. He is the author or co-author of more than 500 research papers, mainly on astrophysics and cosmology, and of numerous magazine and newspaper articles on scientific and general subjects. He is the author of several books, including From Here to Infinity: Scientific Horizons (2011) and On the Future (2018). He has broadcast and lectured widely and held various visiting professorships, etc. His main current research interests are high energy astrophysics, cosmic structure formation and general cosmological issues. | |
| 2 | Name: | Sir John Meurig Thomas | | | Institution: | The Royal Institution of Great Britain & University of Cambridge | | | Year Elected: | 1993 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 102. Chemistry and Chemical Biochemistry | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1932 | | | Death Date: | November 13, 2020 | | | | | | |
Professor Sir John Meurig Thomas was born in December 1932 in South Wales. The son of a coalminer, Sir John's interest in science was greatly aroused as a teenager when his physics mistress talked about the life and work of Michael Faraday, who has remained one of his scientific heroes. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree from the University of Wales, Swansea, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of London. His first academic appointment (1958) was at the University of Wales, Bangor, where inter alia he demonstrated the profound influence that dislocations and other structural imperfections exert upon the chemical, electronic and surface properties of solids. He became Professor and Head of Chemistry at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1969, where he broadened his interests in solid-state, surface and materials chemistry and pioneered the application of electron microscopy in chemistry. In 1978 he became Head of the Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Cambridge, where his development of new techniques in solid-state and materials science and his design and synthesis of new catalysts progressed greatly. From 1986-91 he was Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, where he occupied the chair that was created for Michael Faraday. He was also Director of the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory. At Cambridge he extended his earlier electron microscopic and surface studies of mineral and intercalates to encompass the synthesis and structural determination of zeolitic materials by a combination of solid-state NMR, neutron scattering and real-space imaging. At London he added synchrotron radiaton to his armoury and devised techniques which combine X-ray spectroscopy and high-resolution X-ray diffraction to determine the atomic structure of active sites of solid catalysts under operating conditions. He has also designed new microporous and mesoporous catalysts, onto the inner surfaces of which active centres (for isomerizations, epoxidation, chiral hygrogenations and chiral amination) were grafted from organo-metallic precursors. He has also devised molecular sieve catalysts that convert n-alkanes to n-alkanol, cyclohexane or cyclohexene to adipic acid, n-hexane to adipic acid and cyclohexanone to its oxime and caprolactam, all in air under solvent-free conditions. One of his inventions, the single-step, solvent-free catalytic synthesis of ethyl acetate, is the basis of a 220,000 ton p.a. plant in the U.K., the largest of its kind in the world. One of his most significant recent catalytic innovations is the boosting of the enamtioselectivity of asymmetric organometallic catalysts by constraining them within mesoporous supports. This has been multiply patented (2003) by German industry as a means of producing enantiomerically enriched hydroxycarboxylic esters. He is the author of over 950 research papers and twenty patents, of two definitive university texts on heterogeneous catalysis (1967 and 1997), and of Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place (1991; Japanese translation, 1994; Italian translation, 2006), and co-editor of many other monographs. His awards include the Davy Medal and the Bakerian and Rutherford Lectureships of the Royal Society, the Faraday Medal, Longstaff Medal and four others of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Messel Gold Medal of the Society of Chemical Industry, the Semenov Centenary Medal and the Kapitza Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Science, the Willard Gibbs Gold Medal of the American Chemical Society, the Royal Medal (Queen's Medal), and the first recipient of the Award for Creative Research in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Catalysis, also of the American Chemical Society. In 1995 the European Federation of Catalyst Societies (EFCATS), representing 24 national societies, chose him to give the first series of François Gault Lectures at 12 centers in 6 European countries. An FRS since 1977, in 1999 he was elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering for work that "has profoundly added to the science-base of heterogeneous catalysis leading to the commercial exploitation of zeolites through engineering processes". He was a Foreign Member or Hon. Foreign Fellow of fifteen other national and international academies and holds numerous honorary doctorates from Australian, British, Canadian, Chinese, Dutch, Egyptian, French, Italian, Spanish and U.S. universities. In 2000 The Electron Microscopy and Microanalysis Society of America held a symposium in his honour at their annual convention in Philadelphia, In September 2002 an International Symposium of Catalysis was held in London by the Royal Society of Chemistry to celebrate his 70th birthday. Stanford University awarded him the Linus Pauling gold medal in 2003 for his contributions to the advancement of science, and the Italian Chemical Society presented him with its Guilio Natta Gold Medal for meritorious work in catalysis. In 2007 the International Precious Metal Institute awarded him its Distinguished Achievement Award for "pioneering contributions to the field of heterogeneous catalysis using precious metals over a long, distinguished career." In 2010, he was awarded three lectureships: the Bragg Prize lecturship of the British Crystallographic Association, the Sven Beggren Prize lectureship of the Royal Lund Physiographic Academy, and the Ertl Prize lectureship of the Max Planck Gessellschaft. One of the world's most highly cited chemists, Sir John was founding co-editor-in-chief of Catalysis Letters (1987), Topics in Catalysis (1992), and Current Opinion in Solid-State and Materials Science (1996). He has done much to popularize science amoung young people and adult lay audiences, giving numerous lecture-demonstrations, radio, television, and national Portrait Gallery talks: his Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on crystals were broadcast on BBC national TV in 1987. He served (1982-85) as a science advisor in the U.K. Government Cabinet Office Committee, as Chairman of CHEMRAWN (chemical research applied to world needs), and Trustee of the Science Museum and of the Natural History Museum, London. In 1991 he was knighted for his services to chemistry and the popularization of science. In recognition of his contributions to geochemistry, a new mineral, meurigite, was name after him in 1995. John Meurig Thomas was Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, and Honorary Professor at the Department of Materials Science, University of Cambridge. From 1993-2002 he was Master of Peterhouse, the oldest college in the University of Cambridge. He is Vice President of the Cambridge University Musical Society. Sir John died on November 13, 2020, at age 87. | |
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