 Professor Brian Heaton Chemistry Dept., University of Liverpool UK L69 7ZD I was one of the first research students of Professor Joe Chatt, FRS at the University of Sussex (1964); Professor Chatt had just left ICI research laboratories to start academic life and, after having had such famous co-workers as Bernard Shaw, Luigi Venanzi etc. at ICI, he must have been very frustrated with such a small group of inexperienced researchers in a brand new laboratory with no equipment/instrumentation! My University academic career started at the University of Kent on carbonyl clusters in conjunction with Professor Chini's group in Milan, as a result of acquiring the first FT NMR spectrometer in the UK (1972). This collaboration with Italian cluster chemists still continues today. I obtained the first NMR (13C) spectra under high pressures of gas in the early 80's and collaboration with Professors T. Eguchi (University of Osaka)/J. Jonas (University of Illinois) allowed the development of this technique at the University of Kent; this has been exploited (with Dr J. Iggo) for the last ca. 25 years, since I moved to University of Liverpool, and these studies have allowed mechanisms of important industrial homogeneous catalytic reactions to be elucidated under “truly” in situ conditions, which is the focus of the lecture today. |
