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Sir George Porter
(1920 - 2002)
English chemist, corecipient with fellow Englishman Ronald George
Wreyford Norrish and Manfred Eigen of West Germany of the 1967 Nobel
Prize for Chemistry. All three were honoured for their studies in flash
photolysis, a technique for observing the intermediate stages of very
fast chemical reactions.
George Porter was born in Yorkshire, England, attended Leeds University,
then served as a radar officer during WW II. After undergraduate work
at the University of Leeds, Porter earned his doctorate at the University
of Cambridge under Norrish in 1949. He continued on there, developing
the technique of flash photolysis with Norrish. In this technique, a
gas or liquid in equilibrium is illuminated with an ultra-short burst
of light that causes photochemical reactions in the substance. The extremely
short-lived intermediate products of these reactions are illuminated
by a second burst of light that enables an absorption spectrum to be
taken of the reaction products before the gas has returned to a state
of equilibrium. Porter specifically studied the equilibrium of chlorine
atoms and molecules. In 1955 he joined the faculty of chemistry at the
University of Sheffield, where he taught until 1966, becoming in that
year director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain and Fullerian
professor of chemistry. Aside from his research, Porter excels as a
lecturer, with the ability to present complex subjects with great clarity
and an entertaining manner even to non-scientists. In the 1960s his
BBC broadcasts on "The Laws of Disorder" were very popular.
Porter was knighted in 1972.
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