George Porter
Porter, George (1920-2002) was a British physical chemist who shared the 1967 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Manfred Eigen of Germany and Ronald George Wreyford Norrish of the United Kingdom. Porter, Eigen, and Norrish achieved the award for developing techniques to measure rapid chemical reactions.
Porter was born Dec. 6, 1920, in Stainforth, now in West Yorkshire, England, to John Smith Porter and Alice Ann Roebuck Porter. He studied chemistry at Leeds University and then under Norrish at Cambridge University, England. Porter mainly investigated photochemical reactions (chemical reactions involving light). His early research attempted to study free radicals (unstable molecules with at least one unpaired electron) that were produced in gaseous photochemical reactions. He also studied the equilibrium of chlorine atoms and molecules.
In the late 1940's, Porter and Norrish developed a technique known as flash photolysis to measure rapid chemical reactions. In flash photolysis, a brief burst of intense light produces a chemical change. The resulting unstable chemicals can be studied by their absorption spectra. These are bands of color broken by dark lines whose frequencies show the presence of certain chemicals. Norrish and Porter managed to stop chemical reactions at intervals of almost one nanosecond (a billionth of a second). The technique later was improved so that the time became a matter of femtoseconds (quadrillionths of seconds).
During World War II (1939–1945), he studied radio physics and electronics in college and became a radar officer in the British navy. In 1955, he became professor of physical chemistry at Sheffield University. In 1966, Porter took the position of Fullerian Professor of Chemstry and Director of the Royal Institution, England's prestigious scientific society.
Porter became prominent as a spokesman for science in the United Kingdom, and he served as an adviser to several film and television productions. Porter was president of the Royal Society, from 1985 to 1990. He was knighted in 1972 and admitted to the Order of Merit in 1989.