(1792–1852; b. London, England; d. London, England) English economist and statistician. A founder of the RSS, he was a pioneer of the use of index numbers. In 1834 he was appointed as the first head of the Statistical Department of the Board of Trade. That department evolved into the present day Office for National Statistics. He was elected FRS in 1838.
George Porter
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British chemist (1920–
Born at Stainforth in Yorkshire, Porter was educated at the universities of Leeds and Cambridge, where he obtained his PhD. After working on radar during World War II, he returned to Cambridge until, in 1955, he was appointed professor of chemistry at Sheffield University. From 1966 until 1985 he held one of the leading positions in British science, namely, the directorship of the Royal Institution and the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry. In 1987 he was appointed professor (from 1990, chairman) of the Centre for Photomolecular Science at Imperial College, London.
In collaboration with his Cambridge teacher, Ronald Norrish, Porter developed from 1949 onward the new technique of flash photolysis. There were good reasons for thinking that the course of a chemical reaction was partly determined by a number of intermediate species too short-lived to be detected, let alone investigated. Porter therefore set out to study what he called the spectroscopy of transient substances.
The apparatus used involved a long glass or quartz tube containing the gas under investigation. This was subjected to a very brief pulse of intense light from flash tubes, causing photochemical reactions in the gas. The free radicals and excited molecules produced have only a transient existence, but could be detected by a second flash of light, directed along the axis of the reaction tube, used to record photographically an absorption spectrum of the reaction mixture. In this way the spectra of many free radicals could be detected.
In addition, it was possible to direct a continuous beam of light down the reaction tube and focus on one particular absorption line of a species known to be present. The change of this line with time allowed kinetic measurements of the rates of very fast gas reactions to be made.
The methods of flash photolysis have since been extended to liquids and solutions, to gas kinetics, and to the study of complex biological molecules such as hemoglobin and chlorophyll. Porter shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1967 with Norrish and with Manfred Eigen for “their studies of extremely fast reactions effected by disturbing the equilibrium by means of very short pulses of energy.”
In 1990 Porter was raised to the British peerage as Baron Porter of Luddenham.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: George Porter, Baron Porter of Luddenham |
Porter, George, Baron Porter of Luddenham, 1920-2002, British chemist, b. Stainforth, England, grad. Leeds Univ., Ph.D. Cambridge, 1949. After serving as a radar officer during World War II, he did postgraduate research with R. G. W. Norrish at Cambridge. His first problem involved the study, using flow techniques, of free radicals produced in gaseous photochemical reactions. Drawing upon his wartime experience, Porter subsequently conceived the idea of using pulses of light of shorter duration than the lifetime of the free radicals to study those molecules, and constructed an apparatus that he and Norrish applied to the study of gaseous free radicals and of combustion. Their collaboration continued until 1954 when Porter left Cambridge for the Univ. Porter and Norrish shared the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with German physical chemist Manfred Eigen for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions. Porter was cited in particular for his work on photochemistry (chemical reactions triggered by light) and flash photolysis (photographing the behavior of molecules during chemical reactions). Porter also excelled presenting complex scientific subjects to the general public, and his BBC broadcasts in the 1960s on "The Laws of Disorder" were very popular. From 1985 to 1990 he was president of the Royal Society. He was knighted in 1972 and was created a life peer in 1990.
| Wikipedia: George Porter |
For other persons named George Porter, see George Porter (disambiguation).
| George Porter | |
|---|---|
| Born | 6 December 1920 Stainforth |
| Died | 31 August 2002 (aged 81) |
| Nationality | British |
| Fields | chemistry |
| Alma mater | University of Leeds |
| Known for | flash photolysis |
| Notable awards | Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1967 |
George Hornidge Porter, Baron Porter of Luddenham, OM, FRS (6 December 1920 – 31 August 2002) was a British chemist.
Porter was born in Stainforth, near Thorne, Yorkshire. He was educated at Thorne Grammar School,[1] then won a scholarship to the University of Leeds and gained his first degree in chemistry. He then served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve during the Second World War.
Porter then went on to do research at Cambridge under 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 minutiae of the light reactions of photosynthesis, with particular regard to possible applications to a hydrogen economy, of which he was a strong advocate.
Porter became a Fullerian Professor of Chemistry and director 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. Porter was president of the Royal Society 1985–1990, having been elected a Fellow in 1960 and also winning the Davy Medal in 1971, the Rumford Medal in 1978 and the Copley Medal in 1992. He was knighted in 1972 and was made a life peer as Baron Porter of Luddenham, of Luddenham in the County of Kent, in 1990.
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.
Porter served as Chancellor of the University of Leicester between 1984 and 1995. In 2001, the University's chemistry building was named the George Porter Building in his honour.
See also
References
- ^ Archer, Mary. ‘Porter, George, Baron Porter of Luddenham (1920–2002)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn, Oxford University Press, Jan 2006; online edn, May 2007 accessed 26 June 2009
- Phillips, David (October 2002). "Obituary: George Porter (1920-2002)". Nature (England) 419 (6907): 578. doi:. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 12374966.
- Weisskopf, V F; Eyring H, Eyring E M (November 1967). "Nobel Prizes: 4 named for international award (Hans Bethe, Manfred Eigen, R.G. Norrish, George Porter)". Science (UNITED STATES) 158 (802): 745–8. doi:. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 4860395.
External links
- Profile – Royal Institution of Great Britain
- The Lord Porter of Luddenham (PDF) – Biographical memoirs, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 149, no. 1, March 2005
- The Life and Scientific Legacy of George Porter, World Scientific Publishing, 2006
- His obituary notice in The Telegraph, 2 September 2002
- Biographical Database of the British Chemical Community, 1880-1970
- "The Relevance of Science". George Porter. JASA Vol. 28. March 1976. pp. 2-3. (includes editorial responses from astronomer Owen Gingerich and theologian Bernard Ramm amongst others)
| Honorary titles | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Sir Alan Hodgkin |
Chancellor of the University of Leicester 1984–1995 |
Succeeded by Sir Michael Atiyah |
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