In November the Research School of Chemistry celebrated our 50th Anniversary.
On Thursday the 16th of November we were very lucky to welcome Professor Christopher Dobson from the University of Cambridge for the Arthur Birch Lecture, who spoke to us about his groundbreaking work in amyloid formation by peptides and proteins.
On the following day we were thankful to welcome many of you to our 50th anniversary function, in which we celebrated the achievements of our School in style. In particular we were glad to welcome three of our alumni: Roger Smith (who is most likely our first Ph.D. graduate (1968)), Kim Finnie and Julieanne Dougherty who all gave presentations to a packed audience on their experiences as RSC Ph.D. students and their subsequent careers. Following this, Martin Bennett gave a highly entertaining summary of the RSC during his tenure here over the past 50 years.
As a birthday present to the School, we also have an impressive sculpture to decorate the atrium of the foyer of the new RSC building. It is a result of the hard work of local artists, Dr Julie Brooke and Geoff Farquhar-Still, who both made brief speeches about its genesis, construction and symbolism. John White unveiled the sculpture and we thank him for his generosity in providing funds towards it.
We also launched the David and Veronica Craig Scholarship supporting PhD students in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry. Thanks to the very generous gift from Veronica Craig and her family, and to Prof. Richard Welberry and Dr Linda Welberry. We also announced the Jubilee Scholarship – a scholarship to commemorate the 50th anniversary. The scholarship supports PhD students across all disciplines in Chemistry. A special thank you to Prof. Martin Bennett for his generous support in helping to establish this scholarship.
Thank you everyone for attending the day and Happy Birthday to the School!
