George Porter: a peer among scientists

摘要

Lord Porter of Luddenham - George Porter,as he was better known - was one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century.Science was his passion,from his Yorkshire boyhood through his early years at Leeds,Cambridge and Sheffield,his near-twenty year period as Director of London's Royal Institution,his five-year term of office as President of the Royal Society,and his last period of research at Imperial College,London.He devised the technique of flash photolysis while he was a PhD student at Cambridge,and went on to make the first observation of the triplet state and to elucidate the mechanisms of many organic photochemical reactions.This paper describes his life and work,with particular reference to his interaction with the IPS conference series.