Sir Eric Rideal FRS and The Rideal Conferences

Sir Eric Rideal was born in 1890 and like his father he studied chemistry. After graduating from Cambridge he did electrochemical research in Germany, and then with a Cambridge friend he worked with his father in his London laboratory on electrochemical analytical techniques and water treatment. In the First World War Rideal went to the front to organise water supplies where he suffered dysentery and was returned to England. He then joined the Munitions Invention Board and he worked on ammonia synthesis at University College London where he gave lectures, and after the war he went to America for a year as a visiting Professor before taking up a lectureship at Cambridge. This was the start a prolific period of research on topical catalysis and surface science. In 1930 he was appointed Professor and elected a Fellow of The Royal Society. In 1946 he left Cambridge and went to The Royal Institution in London. From there Rideal moved to the Chair of Physical Chemistry at Kings College London in 1950, and a year later he was knighted for his work during World War II. On retirement at 65 he worked at Imperial College for several years almost until his death in 1974. Rideal pioneered important areas of physical chemistry and his legacy continued through many of his research students that became distinguished academics and industrialists several of whom became Fellows of The Royal Society. Rideal’s memory continues through the Rideal Trust Bursaries, the Rideal Lectureship, the King’s College Tadion-Rideal Prize and the Rideal Conferences. The Rideal Conferences began in 1962 when Professor Charles Kemball organised a research symposium entitled “Chemisorption and Catalysis” at Queen’s University Belfast in honour of Rideal, his former Cambridge PhD supervisor. The Conferences continued every 3 years and soon they became known as the Rideal Conferences which have been held at universities in Great Britain and Ireland. The most recent Rideal Conference took place in Berlin, the first to be held in Mainland Europe, and it is to be hoped in the future others will be held elsewhere in the world.