Stephen Liddle

Stephen T. Liddle FRSC is a British professor of Inorganic chemistry at the University of Manchester ^[2]. He is Head of Inorganic Chemistry and Co-Director of the Centre for Radiochemistry Research at the University of Manchester since 2015.

Early life and education

He was born in Sunderland, in the North East of England, in 1974. He obtained a BSc(Hons) in Chemistry with Applied Chemistry from Newcastle University (1997) and a PhD also from Newcastle University (2000) under the supervision of W. Clegg. His BSc(Hons) included a year working as a research scientist for ICI Performance Chemicals at the Wilton Teeside site.

Career and research

After postdoctoral fellowships at Edinburgh University (P. J. Bailey), Newcastle University (K. Izod) as the Wilfred Hall Research Fellow, and Nottingham University (P. L. Arnold) his independent academic career began at Nottingham University with a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2007-2015) held with a proleptic Lectureship. He was promoted to Associate Professor and Reader (2010) and Professor of Inorganic Chemistry (2013).

He moved to the University of Manchester in 2015 as Head of Inorganic Chemistry and Co-Director of the Centre for Radiochemistry Research. He currently holds an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Established Career Fellowship (2015-2020).

He was Chairman of COST Action CM1006, a 22 country, research network of over 120 research groups in f-block chemistry (2011-2015)^[3], is an advisor to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (2013-now), and is an elected category 3 member of Senate, The University of Manchester (2016-now).

Liddle’s research is focused on synthetic inorganic chemistry, particularly making early transition metal, lanthanide, and actinide complexes to explore their structure, bonding, reactivity, and magnetism. In 2011 he reported a single-molecule magnet based on depleted uranium.^[4] His research group was the first to synthesize a molecule with a terminal uranium-nitrogen triple bond (e.g., uranium nitride) in 2012.^{[5] [6]}

Honours and awards

Liddle was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) in 2011 and is Vice President to the Executive Committee of the European Rare Earth and Actinide Society (2012-now).^[7]

He was awarded the RSC Sir Edward Frankland Fellowship (2011)^[8], the RSC Radiochemistry Group Bill Newton Award (2011)^[9] and the RSC Corday-Morgan Prize (2015).^[10] He was a recipient of a Rising Star Award at the 41st International Conference on Coordination Chemistry (2014).^[11]

He was awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starter Grant (2009) and Consolidator Grant (2014).

He was one of the Periodic Videos team awarded the IChemE Petronas award for excellence in education and training (2008).

Popular science

Liddle is known for his work on The Periodic Table of Videos, a series of videos from the University of Nottingham presented on YouTube, which feature educational vignettes on the periodic table.^[12]

He is executive producer for Chemistry at Manchester Explains Research Advances (CAMERA)^{[13] [14]}, a series of videos from The University of Manchester presented on YouTube, which feature videos explaining chemistry research papers published from the University of Manchester.

He is a National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement Ambassador (2013-now)^[15]

References