Person:Joseph Chatt (4)

Joseph Chatt was a renowned researcher in the area of inorganic and organometallic chemistry. His name is associated with the description of the pi-bond between transition metals and alkenes, the so-called Dewar-Chatt-Duncanson model.[S3]

Career

Chatt received his Ph.D. at Cambridge University under the direction of F. G. Mann for research on organoarsenic and organophosphorus compounds and their complexes with transition metals.[S1] He was employed at Imperial Chemical Industries from 1949 to 1962, during which time he, often in collaboration with his colleague Bernard Shaw, published influential work on the metal hydrides and metal alkene complexes. He then moved to a professorship at the University of Sussex and subsequently assumed directorship of the Nitrogen Fixation Unit under the Agricultural Research Council.[S2] Using the coordination complex W(N2)2(dppe)2, his group first demonstrated the conversion of a dinitrogen ligand into ammonia. This work provided some of the first molecular models for nitrogen fixation.[S3]

Awards

Among his many awards, he was recognized with the 2001 Wolf Prize "for pioneering and fundamental contributions to synthetic transition metal chemistry, particularly transition metal hydrides and dinitrogen complexes."[S3]

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1961, and was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire.[S4] His legacy has been commemorated with the Joseph Chatt Lectureship (see also here) founded in 1995 by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Early Life

Joseph Chatt was born into a family that had farmed for many generations in County Durham, though at age 10, his family moved to Welton, near Carlisle in Cumberland. Though he was expected to take on the family farm, an inclination to chemistry, nurtured by an uncle who was Chief Scientist at a steel works in Newcastle, lead him to his career in science.[S2]

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Joseph Chatt.

1.   Chatt, J.; Mann, F. G., "The Synthesis of Ditertiary Arsines. Meso- and Racemic Forms of Bis-4-Covalent-Arsenic Compounds", Journal of the Chemical Society (1939)
   pp. 610-615.

   DOI:10.1039/JR9390000610

2. ↑ Leigh, G.J. (editor), N. W. Winterton (editor), Modern Coordination Chemistry: The Legacy of Joseph Chatt, Springer Verlag (2002).

   ISBN 0854044698

3.   Wikipedia.

   article on Joseph Chatt.

4. ↑ ^4.0 4.1 Eaborn, C., and G.J. Leigh, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol. 42, (Nov 1996)
   pp. 96-110.

   (see JSTOR)

5.   Joseph Chatt, in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.