George Porter
- 2 min read
- 3 chapters
Related on Lably
Through Chemist, Chemistry and Radical (chemistry)
Education and early life
Porter was born in Stainforth, near Thorne, in the then West Riding of Yorkshire. He was educated at Thorne Grammar School, then won a scholarship to the University of Leeds and gained his first degree in chemistry. During his degree, Porter was taught by Meredith Gwynne Evans, who he later said was the most brilliant chemist he had ever met. He was awarded a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1949 for research investigating free radicals produced by photochemical means. He would later become a fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
Sign in to keep reading
2 more chapters are free with a Lably account.
Career and research
Porter served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during the Second World War. Porter then went on to do research at the University of Cambridge supervised by Ronald George Wreyford Norrish where he began the work that ultimately led to them becoming Nobel Laureates.
His original research in developing the technique of flash photolysis to obtain information on short-lived molecular species provided the first evidence of free radicals. His later research utilised the technique to study the detailed aspects of the light-dependent reactions of photosynthesis, with particular regard to possible applications to a hydrogen economy, of which he was a strong advocate.
He was Assistant Director of the British Rayon Research Association from 1953 to 1954, where he studied the phototendering of dyed cellulose fabrics in sunlight.
Porter served as professor in the Chemistry department at the University of Sheffield in 1954–65. It was here he started his work on flash photolysis with equipment designed and made in the departmental workshop. During this tenure he also took part in a television programme describing his work. This was in the "Eye on Research" series. Porter became Fullerian Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Royal Institution in 1966. During his directorship of the Royal Institution, Porter was instrumental in the setting up of Applied Photophysics, a company created to supply instrumentation based on his group's work. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1967 along with Manfred Eigen and Ronald George Wreyford Norrish. In the same year he became a visiting professor at University College London.
Porter was a major contributor to the Public Understanding of science. He became president of the British Association in 1985 and was the founding Chair of the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS). He gave the Romanes Lecture, entitled "Science and the human purpose", at the University of Oxford in 1978; and in 1988 he gave the Dimbleby Lecture, "Knowledge itself is power." From 1990 to 1993 he gave the Gresham lectures in astronomy.
Family
In 1949 Porter married Stella Jean Brooke.