John Simonsen

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John Lionel Simonsen (born July 22, 1884 in Levenshulme , Manchester , † February 20, 1957 in London ) was an English chemist ( organic chemistry ).

Simonsen, whose parents came from Denmark (his father was a businessman), attended the Manchester Grammar School and studied at the University of Manchester , where he received his Bachelor's degree with top grades in 1904, a D.Sc. received and a student of William Henry Perkin junior was. In 1907 he became an assistant lecturerand demonstrator in Manchester. Before the First World War he was in Madras, where he was a professor colleague of Charles Gibson at Presidency College from 1910. While Gibson went to England after the outbreak of war, Simonsen stayed in India, where he was oil controller and advisor to the Indian Munitions Board. He also founded the Indian Science Congress Association in 1914, whose secretary he was until 1926. From 1919 to 1925 he was chief chemist at the Forest Research Institute and College in Dehra Dun and from 1925 to 1928 professor at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. In 1928 he returned to England, where he was initially a colleague of Gibson at Guy's Hospital in London. In 1930 he became a professor at the University of Wales in Bangor (Wales)what he stayed until 1942. From 1943 to 1952 he was research director of the Colonial Products Research Council (later Tropical Products Research Council). In 1945 he became a member of the Agricultural Research Council.

Simonsen dealt with the chemistry of natural products, especially terpenes and sesquiterpenes. For example, he discovered Caren in Indian turpentine. He worked frequently with AE Bradfield and AR Penfield, director of the Museum of Art and Sciences in Sydney, who provided him with interesting new natural products. He was primarily an experimenter and had little interest in theory.

A visit with Robert Robinson to the Caribbean and the United States in 1944 resulted in the establishment of the Microbiology Research Institute in Trinidad and the effective control of mosquitoes on the coast of British Guiana, which significantly reduced child mortality. In 1946 he visited South and East Africa with Ian Heilbron .

In 1950 he received the Davy Medal . From 1932 he was a Fellow of the Royal Society . In 1949 he was ennobled. In 1949 he received the Fritzsche Award from the American Chemical Society. He has received honorary degrees from St. Andrews, Malaysia and Birmingham.

Ewart Jones is one of his doctoral students .

He married in 1913 and had one daughter.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data, publications and academic family tree of John Lionel Simonsen at academictree.org, accessed on January 1, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Simonsen, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Simonsen, John Lionel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English chemist
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Levenshulme
DATE OF DEATH February 20, 1957
Place of death London