Education University of Oxford Role Chemist | Name Peter Day | |
Born August 20, 1938 (age 85)
Kent, England ( 1938-08-20 ) Thesis Light induced charge transfer in solids (1965) | ||
Institutions University of Oxford Alma mater Wadham College, Oxford Doctoral students Matthew Rosseinsky | ||
Peter Day (born 20 August 1938 in Kent, England) is a British inorganic chemist and Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at University College London (UCL).
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Education
Day was educated at Maidstone Grammar School and Wadham College, Oxford where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1961 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1965 for research supervised by Robert Williams.
Career and research
Day is a pioneer of materials chemistry, seeking unusual physical properties in inorganic and metal–organic compounds and models to explain them. He played a major role in the development of mixed-valence chemistry, and has carried out important and elegant experimental and theoretical work on the spectra, magnetic properties and conductivity of solid, inorganic complexes.
As a young researcher, he gave the first theoretically consistent description of the visible–ultraviolet spectra of vitamin B12 and its derivatives. Later, he put the assignment of inorganic charge-transfer spectra on a more rigorous basis; he correlated structures and physical properties of metal chain compounds and identified the first optically transparent ferromagnetic compounds by combined optical and neutron scattering methods. He also measured and systematised the optical properties of metamagnets.
Peter Day's graduate work initiated the study of mixed-valence compounds and led to the Robin-Day Classification of such species.
In 2012, he published a memoir about his life in science.
Awards and honours
Peter has received awards from both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry; the latter named one of its awards in materials chemistry after him. He has served many national and international agencies and institutions, both professional and governmental, and holds numerous honorary degrees and fellowships.
Day was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1986, and held the post of Director of the Royal Institution from 1991 to 1998. Day was also director of the Royal Institution's Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory and the Fullerian Professor of Chemistry.
Day was made an honorary fellow of Wadham College, Oxford in 2003 and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.