Carol V. Robinson

Carol Vivien Robinson , née Carol Bradley , (born April 10, 1956 in Kent ) is an English chemist. She was the first female chemistry professor at Cambridge University and then at Oxford University .

Life

Carol Robinson left school at 16 and became a laboratory technician at Pfizer in Sandwich, Kent, where she became familiar with mass spectrometry. She graduated from Swansea University with a master's degree, received her PhD in chemistry from Churchill College, Cambridge University in 1982, was a post-doctoral student at the University of Bristol , then interrupted her academic career for eight years to raise her three children. She then continued her research at Oxford and in 1999 became Associate Professor at Oxford. In 2001 she went to Cambridge as a Professorial Fellow at Churchill College . In 2009 she became Doctor Lee's Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.

She used mass spectrometry as an analytical tool for large molecules and used it to research the three-dimensional structure of proteins (up to virus capsules and ribosomes) and protein folding. She showed that mass spectrometry ( electrospray mass spectrometry in the gas phase ) could also be used for the investigation of large protein complexes.

In 2010 she received the Davy Medal . She has been Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire since 2013 . In 2004 she became a Fellow of the Royal Society . In 2003 she received the Biemann Medal of the American Society of Mass Spectrometry, in 2008 the Christian B. Finsen Award and in 2011 the Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry for interdisciplinarity and the Aston Medal. She is an honorary doctor from the Universities of Kent, York and Bristol. In 2017 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences . 2018 it was from the American Chemical Society with the Frank H. Field and Joe L. Franklin Award for Outstanding Achievement in Mass Spectrometry excellent. In 2019 she received the Royal Medal , in 2020 the Othmer Gold Medal .

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