Professor Robert D. Gillard: Transition Metal Chemist 1936-2013: Part I : From early life to the University of Kent at Canterbury

This first part of a two-part commemoration of the life and work of Robert D. Gillard begins with a biographical outline which provides a context for his chemical achievements. He was awarded a State Scholarship and after his National Service in the Royal Air Force he went up to St Edmund Hall, Oxford, to read Chemistry. There follows a chronological account of his career in Chemistry starting with his undergraduate days in Oxford, where a Part II project with Dr Harry Irving on alkaline earth and cobalt complexes proved seminal. His PhD research at Imperial College, London in the Geoffrey Wilkinson group broadened his experience into the then poorly developed chemistry of rhodium and other platinum group metal complexes. Gillard next went to Sheffield University as a Lecturer where he developed independent research while continuing to work on earlier topics. There followed a move to Canterbury as a Reader at the University of Kent. In his particularly productive seven years there with a large research group he widened his experience further, expanding his interests in such areas as the optical properties of transition metal complexes, considering biological and medical relevance, and increasing the range of metals and ligands he investigated. His subsequent time at Cardiff and then into retirement will be covered in the second part of this commemoration.