Award for Pure and Applied Chemistry Head of Department

Congratulations to Professor John Murphy, Head of the Pure and Applied Chemistry Department at the University of Strathclyde, on his recent achievement of the Charles Rees Award 2016.

Professor Murphy has been selected for this prestigious award due to his highly innovative studies on the preparation, properties and applications of very reactive heterocycles, ranging from extreme electrophiles to super-reducing agents.

Professor Murphy has enjoyed an interesting and diverse career in the field of chemistry, attending Trinity College in Dublin where he obtained his BA in 1976, before achieving his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1980, and later his DSc from the University of Strathclyde in 2002.  He has since worked all around the world, holding positions at the University of Alberta, University of Oxford, and University of Nottingham, before joining the University of Strathclyde as Merck-Pauson Professor of Chemistry in 1995.  A number of visiting Professor opportunities have since taken Professor Murphy to a number of institutions including:  l'Université d'Aix Marseille 1996; NAIST, Japan, 2001; Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, 2004, as well as Fellowships at the Australian National University.  In addition he has held a Royal Society Leverhulme Fellowship here at the University of Strathclyde.

Professor Murphy was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (National Academy of Scotland), was Director of the Glasgow Centre for Physical Organic Chemistry (GCPOC) and Director of WestCHEM, the newly formed integrated Research School in Chemistry for the West of Scotland. Since 2013, he has held the position of Head of Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde.

Speaking of his current research, Professor Murphy stated:  “My research group revels in exploring chemical reactivity in synthesis and in biology. We have a particular interest in electron transfer reactions and in radical chemistry, but are generally interested in reactivity and in mechanisms of organic reactions.”

 Professor John Murphy