Kenneth Wade (1932-2014)

摘要

My first encounter with Kenneth (Ken) Wade was during my undergraduate chemistry degree at the University of Durham when Ken presented a course on boranes. His lecture style was unhurried and always in his characteristic wry manner. His New Scientist article "Boranes: rule-breakers become pattern-makers" had just been published (1974); notice that this placed boranes in a popular science journal, accessible to the general public. This was my first introduction to molecules that mapped onto polyhedra, and strongly appealed to my love affair with three-dimensional structures. Ken was a wonderful teacher, having a gift for making his students think rather than simply taking notes. Tutorials were an unknown quantity as he threw in questions and thought-provoking ideas that seemed a mile away from the basic course material. For an undergraduate essay assignment in 1975,1 chose a "Wadean" topic of "Skeletons in the Cupboard" and later wondered if something more mainstream might have been a better idea. Still, I stuck with the skeletons.