Memorial symposium honours Sussex chemist
Former colleagues and students from all over the world packed an oversubscribed Royal Society of Chemistry meeting in London last week to pay tribute to Sussex chemist Professor Michael Lappert FRS.
Professor Lappert, who made major contributions to the revival of UK inorganic chemistry after 1950, died in March 2014 at the age of 85.
The symposium in Burlington House on 1 April was arranged by the Dalton (Inorganic) Division of the Society, of which Professor Lappert was a former president.
The all-day meeting heard lectures from 11 distinguished speakers from the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand and Germany, including Nobel Prizewinner Professor Dick Schrock FRS. Together they presented an exciting picture of the vitality and innovation of current research in inorganic chemistry.
It was significant that they made repeated references to ideas from the work of Professor Lappert at Sussex. More than one quipped, “In the beginning was Lappert.” The wide range of Professor Lappert’s contributions, covering the vast majority of the elements in the Periodic Table, was also frequently noted.
Professor Geoff Cloke FRS, from the present Sussex staff, was one of the speakers. Others were Sussex alumnus Professor Phil Power FRS and two former Sussex postdoctoral workers, Professor Holger Braunschweig (who worked with Professor Lappert) and Professor Cameron Jones (who worked with Professor John Nixon FRS). The last two were presented with medals for their outstanding research during the current year.
Emeritus Sussex faculty Dr David Smith and Professor Nixon spoke about Professor Lappert’s early life and his extraordinary generosity and kindness to students and colleagues in the University, which he joined in 1964. Many Sussex alumni came to show their appreciation.
Professor Lappert’s widow Lorna was presented with a bound volume of his 30 most influential papers, as judged by the current editorial boards of the principal Royal Society of Chemistry journals. They have been made freely available as showing “a chemist with extraordinarily broad interests and an uncanny knack of pursuing seminal research that has stood the test of time”.
There is also a special issue of the American Chemical Society journal Organometallics dedicated to Professor Lappert, who was a frequent contributor. In their introductory letter the editors say that this will be “an excellent teaching resource for graduate students and researchers new to the field”.