The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#6151
Wilson Baker
1900 - 2002 (102 years)
Wilson Baker FRS was a British organic chemist. He was born in Runcorn, the youngest of the four children of Harry and Mary Baker ; his father was himself a chemist, having studied under Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe and Robert Bunsen, amongst others. Wilson entered Victoria University of Manchester at the age of 16, and graduated top of the honours class in 1921. He then undertook an MSc. with Arthur Lapworth, before working on a PhD with Sir Robert Robinson on the synthesis of isoflavones. The degree was awarded in 1924, when he was also appointed assistant lecturer.
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Albert Leon Henne
1901 - 1967 (66 years)
Albert Leon Henne was an American chemist known for his work on refrigerants. Henne was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1901. He earned his PhD from the University of Brussels in 1925 with a dissertation titled "The Stereoisomers of Chloroiodoethylene". He came to the United States in 1925 as a fellow of the Belgian-American Education foundation at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and became a naturalized citizen in 1933.
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John of St Amand
1230 - 1303 (73 years)
John of St Amand, Canon of Tournay , also known as Jean de Saint-Amand and Johannes de Sancto Amando, was a Medieval author on pharmacology, teaching at the University of Paris. He wrote treatises on a variety of topics including magnetism and experimental method.
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Gabriel François Venel
1723 - 1775 (52 years)
Gabriel François Venel was a French chemist, physician and a contributor to the Encyclopédie, . Biography and Works He is the son of Étienne Venel, physician and Anne Hiché, and was born in Tourbes in 1723. In 1742 he obtained his doctorate in medicine from the University of Montpellier. He also attended the public courses in chemistry given by Rouelle in Paris, which confirmed his main interest in chemistry. Venel later on talked very highly of his professor, including in his famous article Chymie written for the Encyclopédie.
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Julije Domac
1853 - 1928 (75 years)
Julije Domac was a Croatian pharmacist and chemist. In 1874 Domac graduated from the University of Vienna with a degree in pharmacy. In Vienna, some of his professors were Adolf Lieben and August Emil Vogl. On the behalf of professor Lieben he went to work in the laboratory of Leopold von Pebal where he dealt with analysis of gases. In 1880 in Graz he received a doctorate degree in the field of organic chemistry. For his doctorate degree he elucidated the structure of hexene and mannitol obtained from manna. He determined the place of the double bond in hexene obtained from mannitol and proved that it is a derivative of a normal hexene.
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D. Franklin Williams
#6157
Chien Shih-Liang
1908 - 1983 (75 years)
Chien Shih-Liang aka S. L. Chien , was a Chinese chemist who served as the President of the Academia Sinica. A graduate of Tsinghua University and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, he also served as President of National Taiwan University.
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Richard Felix Marchand
1813 - 1850 (37 years)
Richard Felix Marchand was a German chemist. His son was the physician Felix Jacob Marchand . In 1840, Marchand was appointed professor at the University of Berlin. In 1843, he accepted an appointment as associate professor of chemistry at the University of Halle. In 1846, he became full professor there. Together with Otto Linné Erdmann, he was editor of the Journal für praktischen Chemie from 1839. A large number of experimental scientific investigations are given by him in Annalen der Physik.
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Camille Matignon
1867 - 1934 (67 years)
Arthème Camille Matignon was a French chemist noted for his work in thermochemistry. He was a member of the Académie des Sciences, President of the French Chemical Society and an honorary Fellow of the British Chemical Society.
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Martin Freund
1863 - 1920 (57 years)
Martin Freund was a German chemist and professor at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. Life Freund was born the son of a Jewish merchant. After graduating from the Realgymnasium at the Zwinger in Breslau, he started to study chemistry at the University of Breslau and the Humboldt University of Berlin in 1881. He received his doctorate in 1884. . During his studies he became a member of the Akademischer Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein zu Breslau in 1881. He was assistant to Hermann Wichelhaus and lecture assistant to August Wilhelm von Hofmann. In 1888 he habilitated in Berlin and in 189...
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Otto Maass
1890 - 1961 (71 years)
Otto Maass, was a Canadian academic and scientist. Education Born in New York City, New York, Maass started teaching at McGill University in 1923 retiring in 1955. He was the Macdonald Professor of Chemistry and was chairman of the department of chemistry from 1937 to 1955.
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William Ripley Nichols
1847 - 1886 (39 years)
William Ripley Nichols was a noted American chemist. Early life Nichols was born in Boston, Massachusetts, graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1869, and served there as instructor and assistant professor until 1872, when he was elected professor of general chemistry, which chair he retained until his death in Hamburg, Germany.
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Marceli Struszyński
1880 - 1959 (79 years)
Marceli Struszyński was a Polish chemist and Professor of Warsaw University of Technology from 1938 to 1939 and 1945–1959. His research was in analytical chemistry and he published several textbooks on the topic. Additionally, he developed an original classification of anions.
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Friedrich Auerbach
1870 - 1925 (55 years)
Friedrich Auerbach was a German chemist. He was the son of anatomist Leopold Auerbach and the brother of physicist Felix Auerbach. He was the father of geneticist Charlotte Auerbach. Biography He studied mathematics, physics and chemistry at the universities of Leipzig and Breslau — at Leipzig his instructors were Johannes Wislicenus and Wilhelm Ostwald; at Breslau he was a student of Albert Ladenburg. From 1894 to 1903 he was associated with factories in Edenkoben and Krefeld, and afterwards worked in the chemical laboratory of Richard Abegg at Breslau. From 1904 he worked at the Reich Healt...
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Rudolf Nietzki
1847 - 1917 (70 years)
Rudolf Hugo Nietzki was a German chemist who specialized in industrial dyes derived from coal tar. While a professor at the University of Basel in Switzerland he initiated the university's association with to the local chemical industry.
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John Murray
1841 - 1914 (73 years)
Sir John Murray was a pioneering Canadian-born Scottish oceanographer, marine biologist and limnologist. He is considered to be the father of modern oceanography. Early life and education Murray was born at Cobourg, Canada West on 3 March 1841. He was the second son of Robert Murray, an accountant, and his wife Elizabeth Macfarlane. His parents had emigrated from Scotland to Ontario in about 1834. He went to school in London, Ontario and later to Cobourg College. In 1858, at the age of 17 he returned to Scotland to live with his grandfather, John Macfarlane, and continue his education at Stirling High School.
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Lambert Heinrich von Babo
1818 - 1899 (81 years)
Lambert Heinrich Joseph Anton Konrad Freiherr von Babo was a German chemist. Life Babo was the son of the agronomist Lambert Joseph von Babo and his first wife Karoline Ehrmann. The oenologist August Wilhelm von Babo was his half-brother. After graduating from high school Babo studied medicine at the Universities of Heidelberg and Munich and received a doctorate in 1842 from Heidelberg. In the following year he began studying chemistry under Justus von Liebig at Gießen receiving his habilitation in 1845 from Freiburg im Breisgau.
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Mitchell A. Winnik
#6169
Sigismund Friedrich Hermbstädt
1760 - 1833 (73 years)
Sigismund Friedrich Hermbstädt was a German pharmacist and chemist who wielded great influence on the improvement of science education for pharmacists. He also made numerous contributions in the fields of industrial and agricultural chemistry.
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Yegor Wagner
1849 - 1903 (54 years)
Yegor Yegorovich Wagner was a Russian organic chemist, famous for the discovery of the "Wagner reaction", named after him. Former representative of the Kazan School of Chemistry. Early life Yegor Yegorovich Wagner's grandfather was August Wagner, a pharmacist from East Prussia. In search of happiness, young August went to distant Russia, to the city of Kazan, where he opened his own pharmacy. His affairs were going well, which was largely facilitated by high qualifications and personal charm. After several years of work, August became a wealthy man and married a local girl from a German family.
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Maurice Loyal Huggins
1897 - 1981 (84 years)
Maurice Loyal Huggins was a scientist who independently conceived the idea of hydrogen bonding and who was an early advocate for their role in stabilizing protein secondary structure. An important polymer theory, Flory–Huggins theory, is also named after him.
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Ole Lamm
1902 - 1964 (62 years)
Ole Albert Lamm , was a Swedish physical chemist whose research included diffusion and sedimentation phenomena. Lamm was a graduate student under Nobel Prize laureate The Svedberg at Uppsala University and received his doctorate in 1937 with the thesis Measurements of concentration gradients in sedimentation and diffusion by refraction methods: Solubility properties of potato starch. In 1945, he was appointed professor of theoretical chemistry, from 1953 physical chemistry, at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
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Victor Villiger
1868 - 1934 (66 years)
Victor Villiger was a Swiss-born German chemist and the discoverer of the Baeyer-Villiger oxidation. Life He studied at the University of Geneva. Following his graduation, he began his doctoral studies with Adolf von Baeyer at the University of Munich.
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John Stanley Griffith
1928 - 1972 (44 years)
John Stanley Griffith was a British chemist, mathematician and biophysicist. He was the nephew of the distinguished British bacteriologist Frederick Griffith. Career Beginning as an undergraduate in mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1946–1949, he went on to read Part II biochemistry in 1949–1951. His research career continued in theoretical chemistry at Oxford and Cambridge, where he held a Berry-Ramsey research fellowship at King's College. He had several appointments in Britain and the US in his different disciplines. These included professorships in chemistry at Indiana Universi...
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Augustus George Vernon Harcourt
1834 - 1919 (85 years)
Augustus George Vernon Harcourt FRS was an English chemist who spent his career at Oxford University. He was one of the first scientists to do quantitative work in the field of chemical kinetics. His uncle, William Vernon Harcourt , founded the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Adolf Martin Pleischl
1787 - 1867 (80 years)
Adolf Martin Pleischl was a chemist and medical doctor. In 1815 he obtained his medical doctorate from the University of Prague, where he later served as a professor of general and pharmaceutical chemistry . At Prague he is credited with improvement and redevelopment of the chemical-pharmaceutical institute. In 1838 he relocated to the University of Vienna, where he also redeveloped and modernized its chemical and pharmaceutical facilities. As an instructor, two of his better-known students were Johann Florian Heller and Johann August Natterer .
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Arie Jan Haagen-Smit
1900 - 1977 (77 years)
Arie Jan Haagen-Smit was a Dutch chemist. He is best known for linking the smog in Southern California to automobiles and is therefore known by many as the "father" of air pollution control. After serving as an original board member of the Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Board, formed in 1960 to combat the smog, Dr. Haagen-Smit became the California Air Resources Board's first chairman in 1968. Shortly before his death in Pasadena, California of lung cancer, the Air Resources Board's El Monte Laboratory was named after him.
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Pietro Biginelli
1860 - 1937 (77 years)
Pietro Biginelli was an Italian chemist, who discovered a three-component reaction between urea, acetoacetic ester and aldehydes . He also studied various aspects of sanitation chemistry and chemical products' quality control.
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Wilhelm Henneberg
1825 - 1890 (65 years)
Wilhelm Henneberg was a German chemist and student of Justus von Liebig. Life He attended the Collegium Carolinum in Brunswick and studied at the University of Giessen with Justus von Liebig and at the University of Jena where he received his Ph.D in 1849. It was under the influence of Liebig that Henneberg decided to devote his career to agricultural chemistry.
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Lucius A. Bigelow
1892 - 1973 (81 years)
Lucius Aurelius Bigelow was an American chemist, specializing in the fluorination of organic compounds. Early life Bigelow was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 31, 1892 to Lucius Aurelius and Mary Elizabeth Bigelow. He graduated from Boston English High.
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Brian Duncan Shaw
1898 - 1999 (101 years)
Lieutenant Colonel Brian Duncan Shaw, was a British chemistry lecturer at the University of Nottingham, known for his demonstrations on explosives. Early and personal life Shaw was born in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, the fourth and youngest child of Samuel Shaw and Lydia Emma Shaw, his brothers and sisters being named Lydia Emma, Mabel and Clarence Gordon. His father was a brick manufacturer and his mother had been working as a teacher.
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Arthur Smithells
1860 - 1939 (79 years)
Arthur Smithells, CMG FRS was a British chemist. Early life and education Smithells was born in Bury, Lancashire on 24 May 1860. His father James Smithells was a railway manager. He was educated at the University of Glasgow and then spent time under Roscoe and Schorlemmer at Owens College, Manchester. He gained his BSc from the University of London, then took supplemental courses in Munich and with Robert Bunsen at Heidelberg University.
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Vladimir Vernadsky
1863 - 1945 (82 years)
Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky , also spelt Volodymyr Ivanovych Vernadsky was a Russian, Ukrainian, and Soviet mineralogist and geochemist who is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and radiogeology. He was one of the founders and the first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences . Vladimir Vernadsky is most noted for his 1926 book The Biosphere in which he inadvertently worked to popularize Eduard Suess' 1885 term biosphere, by hypothesizing that life is the geological force that shapes the earth. In 1943 he was awarded the Stalin Prize. Vernadsky's portrait...
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Sven-Olov Lawesson
1926 - 1988 (62 years)
Sven-Olov Lawesson was a Swedish chemist known for his popularization of Lawesson's reagent within the chemical community. He is also known for his 1982 work exploring the possibility of a connection between recreational use of amyl nitrite and an increased incidence of Kaposi's sarcoma in homosexual men.
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Wilhelm Weith
1844 - 1881 (37 years)
Wilhelm Weith was a German-Swiss chemist. He studied chemistry at the polytechnic institute in Zürich and at the University of Heidelberg, receiving his doctorate in 1865 from the University of Zürich. Shortly afterwards, he obtained his habilitation and became a lecturer at both the polyclinic and university. At Zürich, he often served as a substitute teacher for chemist Georg Städeler. In 1871 he became an associate professor of chemistry, followed by a full professorship in 1874. He died from an illness during a stay in Ajaccio, Corsica on 28 November 1881, aged 35.
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Gustavus Detlef Hinrichs
1836 - 1923 (87 years)
Gustavus Detlef Hinrichs was a chemist and natural philosopher most widely known for his findings on periodic laws within the chemical elements. Life Hinrichs was born in 1836 in Lunden in the Duchy of Holstein, which at that time was under the rule of Denmark although it was simultaneously part of the German Confederation. He attended the local polytechnic school and the University of Copenhagen. During his schooling he published several articles and books, including descriptions of the magnetic field of Earth and its interaction with the aether.
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Karl Hugo Huppert
1832 - 1904 (72 years)
Karl Hugo Huppert was a German chemist and physician. Life and achievements Karl Hugo Huppert, son of a wood turner and merchant, Christian Huppert, studied in Leipzig as a pupil of Karl Gotthelf Lehmann , and also at the University of Jena. In 1860 he was appointed head of the chemical laboratory of the Jakob Hospital in Leipzig. In 1862 he took his doctoral examination in medicine, and in the same year acquired his postdoctoral qualification in biochemistry and was in charge of what was then called the “zoochemisches laboratorium”.
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Frederick G. Keyes
1919 - 1985 (66 years)
Frederick George Keyes was an American physical chemist. Keyes was most notable for inventing a method to sterilize milk using ultraviolet rays, and discovering that ultraviolet rays kill germs. According to the National Academies Press, Keyes was also notable for "advances in thermodynamics, equations of state of gases, and thermodynamic properties, in particular liquid water and steam".
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Wilhelm Fleischmann
1837 - 1920 (83 years)
Wilhelm Fleischmann was a German agriculturist and chemist. He is known for his work on the chemistry of milk. Biography He received his education at Nuremberg, Würzburg, Erlangen and Munich. In Justus von Liebig's laboratory in 1862, he began work on agricultural chemistry, and in 1864-67 while teaching in the Realschule at Memmingen conducted experiments there. From 1867 to 1876, he was principal of the Realschule at Lindau and for the following 10 years directed the first dairy experiment station of Germany, in the vicinity of Lalendorf, Mecklenburg. From 1886 to 1896, he was director of the Agricultural Institute at Königsberg and of that at Göttingen after 1896.
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John Young Buchanan
1844 - 1925 (81 years)
John Young Buchanan FRSE FRS FCS was a Scottish chemist, oceanographer and Arctic explorer. He was an important part of the Challenger Expedition. Life He was born in Partickhill, Glasgow on 20 February 1844, the son of Jane Young and her husband, John Buchanan of Dowanhill, a relatively affluent landowner. His brother was the statesman Thomas Ryburn Buchanan.
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Antonio Luna
1866 - 1899 (33 years)
Antonio Narciso Luna de San Pedro y Novicio Ancheta was a Filipino army general who fought in the Philippine–American War before his assassination on June 5, 1899 at the age of 32. Regarded as one of the fiercest generals of his time, he succeeded Artemio Ricarte as the Commanding General of the Philippine Army. He sought to apply his background in military science to the fledgling army. A sharpshooter himself, he organized professional guerrilla soldiers later named the "Luna Sharpshooters" and the "Black Guard" with Senyor Michael Joaquin. His three-tier defense, now known as the Luna Defen...
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Ludwig Barth zu Barthenau
1839 - 1890 (51 years)
Ludwig Barth zu Barthenau was an Austrian chemist born in Rovereto. He studied under Justus von Liebig in Munich, and in 1867 was appointed professor of chemistry at the University of Innsbruck. In 1876 he succeeded Heinrich Hlasiwetz as professor of chemistry at the University of Vienna.
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James Cumming
1777 - 1861 (84 years)
James Cumming was the ninth Professor of Chemistry in Cambridge from 1815 to 1860. Cumming is remembered for his research-led teaching and his lectures during which he would literally shock the audience with a galvanic apparatus. He was also known to electrocute a cat during a demonstration.
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William Arthur Bone
1871 - 1938 (67 years)
William Arthur Bone, FRS was a British fuel technologist and chemist. Biography Bone was born in Stockton-on-Tees, the son of Christopher Bone, a tea merchant, and his wife Mary Elizabeth. He was educated at Middlesbrough High School, the Ackworth Quaker school and Stockton High School. After a year at the Leys School, Cambridge he studied Chemistry and Physics at Owens College, Manchester , followed by a scholarship year at the University of Heidelberg.
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James Woodhouse
1770 - 1809 (39 years)
James Woodhouse was an American surgeon and chemist. Biography He was the son of English emigrants to the United States. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1787, and from its medical department in 1792. In 1791 he served as a surgeon in General Arthur St. Clair's expedition against the western Indians. When Joseph Priestley declined to accept the chair of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in 1795, Woodhouse received the appointment, which he held until his death.
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H. C. Zen
1886 - 1961 (75 years)
H. C. Zen was a Chinese politician, academic and educator who served as president of National Sichuan University from 1935–1937. He was a professor of Chemistry and served as vice president of what is now Nanjing University from 1923–1925. He was a founding member of the Science Society of China, a major science organization in the modern history of China initiated by Chinese students at Cornell University in 1914, and served as its president from 1914 to 1923.
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Heinrich Debus
1824 - 1916 (92 years)
#6198
Hieronymous Theodor Richter
1824 - 1898 (74 years)
Hieronymus Theodor Richter was a German chemist. He was born in Dresden. In 1863, while working at the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology, he co-discovered indium with Ferdinand Reich. He was also a member of the student fraternity "Corps Saxo-Borussia Freiberg". In 1875, he became the director of the Mining Academy in Freiberg.
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Robert Empie Rogers
1813 - 1884 (71 years)
Robert Empie Rogers was a United States chemist. Biography Rogers was born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 29, 1813. The youngest of four brothers, he was educated first under the care of his father, and then by his elder brothers. It was intended that he should be a civil engineer, and for a time he acted as assistant in the survey of the Boston and Providence Railroad, but he abandoned this in 1833.
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Francis Patrick Dwyer
1910 - 1962 (52 years)
Francis Patrick John Dwyer FAA was Professor of Chemistry, Australian National University, Canberra. He was one of the most distinguished scientists Australia has produced. At the time of his death in 1962 he was widely recognised as a leading authority in inorganic chemistry, and had laid the foundation in Australia for a new field of research bridging science and medicine—biological inorganic chemistry. His influence as a teacher and as a researcher was widespread.
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