Green Chemistry Blog

Professor Martyn Poliakoff

Green Chemistry is delighted to announce that Professor Martyn Poliakoff has been awarded a Knighthood in the New Year’s Honours list.

Professor Poliakoff is closely associated with Green Chemistry and was Chair of the Editorial Board from 2006–2012. He says, “I have been associated with Green Chemistry almost from the outset, and I continue to regard it as the leading journal in the field. Long may it continue!”

Professor Poliakoff is an inorganic chemist, whose work has been taken up by industry, notably in the construction of the world’s first multi-reaction supercritical fluid plant. He is a global leader in the field of green and sustainable chemistry and his work in engaging the public with chemistry has been recognised internationally, including through the Periodic Table of Videos on YouTube. Make sure to take a look at the special video made recently to announce the knighthood for Professor Polaikoff online here. Shortly before Christmas he was also elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Professor Poliakoff said “I feel both honoured and somewhat overwhelmed.  I see the award very much as recognition of all the work being done in green and sustainable chemistry in the School of Chemistry by my colleagues, by my research team and by our technical staff whose efforts underpin so much of our research.”

Professor Sir David Greenaway, Vice-Chancellor of The University of Nottingham, said: “What a richly deserved accolade. Sir Martyn contributes so much as a research leader, educator and communicator of science to the wider public. He will receive this honour with his customary modesty, but will be surprised at how widely applauded it is. We are very proud to have him as a colleague.”

Professor Kenneth Seddon

Professor Kenneth Seddon, Green Chemistry Advisory Board member, has also been honoured in the New Year’s Honours list with an OBE for services to Chemistry.

In addition to his ground-breaking research into ionic liquids Professor Seddon has also been very busy recently, having been involved with a featured exhibit at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition, presenting the Inaugural Lecture of the “Frontiers of Knowledge Lecture Series”, House of Commons, receiving four IChemE awards, the Nicklin medal, and the RSC Teamwork award.

The New Year Honours lists recognise the achievements of a wide range of extraordinary people across the UK, you can read more about them here.

Take a look at some recent contributions to Green Chemistry from Martyn Poliakoff and Kenneth Seddon. These are all free to access until the end of February.

15 years of Green Chemistry
James Clark, Roger Sheldon, Colin Raston, Martyn Poliakoff and Walter Leitner
DOI: 10.1039/C3GC90047A, Editorial

Synthesis of metal–organic frameworks by continuous flow
Peter A. Bayliss, Ilich A. Ibarra, Eduardo Pérez, Sihai Yang, Chiu C. Tang, Martyn Poliakoff and Martin Schröder
DOI: 10.1039/C4GC00313F, Paper

Synthesis of antimalarial trioxanes via continuous photo-oxidation with ¹O₂ in supercritical CO₂
Jessica F. B. Hall, Richard A. Bourne, Xue Han, James H. Earley, Martyn Poliakoff and Michael W. George
DOI: 10.1039/C2GC36711D, Paper

Enhanced laccase stability through mediator partitioning into hydrophobic ionic liquids
Lars Rehmann, Ekaterina Ivanova, H. Q. Nimal Gunaratne, Kenneth R. Seddon and Gill Stephens
DOI: 10.1039/C3GC42189A, Paper

Tailoring ionic liquid catalysts: structure, acidity and catalytic activity of protonic ionic liquids based on anionic clusters, [(HSO₄)(H₂SO₄)_x]⁻ (x = 0, 1, or 2)
Karolina Matuszek, Anna Chrobok, Fergal Coleman, Kenneth R. Seddon and Małgorzata Swadźba-Kwaśny
DOI: 10.1039/C4GC00415A, Paper

Green Chemistry Advisory Board member Joan Brennecke, the Keating-Crawford Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, USA, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering.  This honour has been awarded “for innovation in the use of ionic liquids and supercritical fluids for environmentally benign chemical processing.” 

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is one of the highest professional distinctions that can be awarded to an engineer.  An Academy membership honours those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice or education.

Green Chemistry would like to extend our warmest congratulations to Professor Brennecke on this achievement.

On Thursday the 27th September, Professor James Clark from the University of York, UK, gave a public lecture at The Chemistry Centre in London on “From Waste to Wealth using Green Chemistry“.

The world today faces the fundamental issues of increasing waste but decreasing resources as it tries to cope with the ever increasing consumption of a growing population.  Many of the raw resources and elements needed for the manufacture of important products used everyday are now running out.  For example, in our search for ‘carbon-free’ products we have then created additional problems by significantly depleting the world’s resource of other elements, such as germanium.  We generate so much waste, but what do we do with it?  How can we deal with our waste more efficiently?

The only way these problems can be met and dealt with is through a fundamentally different approach to the way we consume resources.  Professor Clark’s lecture shows how by considering our waste as an opportunity rather than a problem, we can fully move towards a truly sustainable resource consumption model and give our children some hope for the future.

The event, sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline, was strongly attended by an audience of 100 people from a broad range of different backgrounds.  The event generated lots of questions and some lively debates which continued long after the lecture had ended. 

Missed the lecture?  You can watch Professor Clark’s lecture in full on The Reaction website!

Professor Clark is the founding Editor of Green Chemistry and is also one of the Editors of the RSC Green Chemistry Book Series – find out more here.

You may also be interested in a few of Professor Clark’s recent Green Chemistry articles – free to access until the 9th November 2012:

Preparation and characterisation of bioplastics made from cottonseed protein, H.-B. Yue, Y.-D. Cui, P. S. Shuttleworth and James H. Clark, Green Chem., 2012, 14, 2009-2016

Thermosetting resin based on epoxidised linseed oil and bio-derived crosslinker, Nontipa Supanchaiyamat, Peter S. Shuttleworth, Andrew J. Hunt, James H. Clark and Avtar S. Matharu, Green Chem., 2012, 14, 1759-1765

A quantitative comparison between conventional and bio-derived solvents from citrus waste in esterification and amidation kinetic studies, James H. Clark, Duncan J. Macquarrie and James Sherwood, Green Chem., 2012, 14, 90-93

Switchable adhesives for carpet tiles: a major breakthrough in sustainable flooring, Peter S. Shuttleworth, James H. Clark, Robert Mantle and Nigel Stansfield, Green Chem., 2010, 12, 798-803