a story lives forever
Register
Sign in
Form submission failed!

Stay signed in

Recover your password?
Register
Form submission failed!

Web of Stories Ltd would like to keep you informed about our products and services.

Please tick here if you would like us to keep you informed about our products and services.

I have read and accepted the Terms & Conditions.

Please note: Your email and any private information provided at registration will not be passed on to other individuals or organisations without your specific approval.

Video URL

You must be registered to use this feature. Sign in or register.

NEXT STORY

Applying for a lectureship at Nottingham after getting married

RELATED STORIES

Inefficient deuterium research at Harwell
Norman Greenwood Scientist
Comments (0) Please sign in or register to add comments

As far as actual novel research goes, it was not particularly productive, I think, for a reason which is a little hard to say politely. But the fact is that I was put in a group of physical chemistry whereas I was an inorganic chemist and the head of the physical group was rather annoyed, I think, that he was foisted off with someone who just wanted to do inorganic chemical experiments with isotopes. And so… though, I didn’t find this out till later when I put in requests for chemicals and instruments and things to do the work, it took inordinately long because the supply chain had a weak link in it, would be the politest way of saying it.

However, I did do some work and some of the work that I started doing was to make use of, interestingly, a non-radioactive isotope – deuterium. Clearly heavy water is an important component of thinking in atomic reactors for moderating the nuclear reactors. So there was a plentiful supply of D2O, deuterium oxide, heavy water, which was not very generally available and was certainly enormously expensive whereas at Harwell there was a lot of it. So I used this and I used the fact also that boron trifluoride was an important component – I needn’t go into the details, but boron was also a moderator for the pile, so that was… the boron isotopes absorbed neutrons so that was one way of controlling things, so there was some boron trifluoride around as well.

So I put these two together and made BF3 di (deuterium oxide), the heavy water equivalent of the H2O compound I was talking about earlier. And by comparing those we got a lot of extra information about the systems. That bit, I think, was about all that came out of it, but for me it was an important couple of years.

Norman Greenwood (1925-2012) was born in Australia and graduated from Melbourne University before going to Cambridge. His wide-ranging research in inorganic and structural chemistry made major advances in the chemistry of boron hydrides and other main-group element compounds. He also pioneered the application of Mössbauer spectroscopy to problems in chemistry. He was a prolific writer and inspirational lecturer on chemical and educational themes, and held numerous visiting professorships throughout the world.

Listeners: Brian Johnson

Professor Brian FG Johnson FRS, FRSE, FRS Chem, FAcad Eu, FAS. Professor of Inorganic Chemistry University of Edinburgh 1991-1995, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry University of Cambridge 1995-2005, Master Fitzwilliam College Cambridge 1999-2005. Research interests include studies of transition metal carbonyls, organometallic chemistry, nano- particles and homogeneous catalysis. Professor Johnson is the author of over 1000 research articles and papers.

Tags: The Atomic Energy Research Establishment

Duration: 2 minutes, 39 seconds

Date story recorded: May 2011

Date story went live: 25 November 2011