Some Forgotten Chemists

This book comprises seventeen independent essays on little remembered chemists whose contributions have had significant impact on chemistry and society. Among these chemists, readers will find names such as Alexander Borodin and Sir William Crookes, whose fame is known but not their chemistry. In the remaining fifteen essays readers will discover about less well-known chemists such as Frederick Accum, John Mercer and Ellen Swallow Richards. Each essay is complete in itself with selection made without regard to the area of chemistry involved, and they appear alphabetically by the family name of individual.

This collection of essays consists of selections from the series originally published quarterly as Some Unremembered Chemists in the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry in-house journal, Chemistry in New Zealand (2013-2018). They are abstracted, edited and abbreviated slightly, and appear with the permission of the copyright holder.

Brian Halton arrived in New Zealand in September 1968. He was born in Lancashire and educated there and in London prior to entering the University of Southampton in 1963. He gained Bachelor’s and Doctoral degrees (1963 and 1966), then experience at the University of Florida prior to appointment as Assistant Professor in 1967. He transferred to the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand in 1968 and spent his career teaching and researching there. Initially a lecturer in chemistry, he rose to become professor, publishing some 180 peer reviewed international articles in his chosen field. He is now Emeritus Professor of Chemistry with some 250 publications.

Brian has served on various international committees and boards, and remains a referee for many prominent international chemistry periodicals. Currently, he is the sole Honorary Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry elected in the 21st century. He was the editor of its flagship journal Chemistry in New Zealand for some ten years from 2001. In his retirement, he has provided an autobiography that surveys his fifty years as a practising organic chemist, a history of the Chemistry Department at Victoria over its first 100 years from the viewpoint of the chemist rather than a historian, a history of chemistry in New Zealand from its settlement, and the individual essays that comprise this book. As a sufferer of significant heart disease, he has provided a booklet A Cat of Nine Lives to assist others. He has also published two chemistry books with Victoria University of Wellington.