The group award lecture is given in memory of Professor Bob Hay, one of the pioneers of macrocyclic chemistry in the UK. This prestigious lecture was given in 2015 by Prof. Dave Adams (Liverpool). The winner presented the Bob Hay lecture at MASC2015 and retains the Bob Hay trophy donated by Bob’s family to celebrate his life and work in macrocyclic chemistry.
Robert Walker Hay was born in Stirling in 1934 and spent his early childhood there before his family moved to England. He attended Bolton Grammar School where, it should be noted, Professor Sir Harold Kroto was also a pupil at that time. He then went to Glasgow University to study for his BSc and PhD degrees in chemistry, graduating PhD in 1959 in carbohydrate chemistry. Following a brief period in industry, Bob took up his first academic appointment in New Zealand at the Victoria University of Wellington where he taught both organic and inorganic chemistry. However, it was for his work with Neil Curtis, carrying out some of the earliest experiments on self-assembly reactions, that he will be remembered. The Curtis-Hay tetraaza macrocyclic ligands, involving simple condensations of diamines with acetone, were some of the first such systems to be prepared. In 1971, Bob returned with his family to the UK to take up an appointment as reader in chemistry at the new Stirling University where he was made a full professor in 1986 and in 1988 Bob transferred to St Andrews. Throughout his career he retained an interest in biomimetic chemistry. Despite working with a group of never more than three or four people, he was principal author of more than 220 primary research papers, book chapters, and books. In 1994 he was instrumental in setting up, under the auspices of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the first discussion group in Europe devoted to coordination chemistry. He also had a long association with the RSC inorganic reaction mechanisms discussion group having served as a secretary and chairman and having been present at every meeting of the group since 1972 until his death. Bob was instrumental in bringing the International Symposium on Macrocyclic Chemistry to St Andrews in July 2000 and the meeting has since teamed up with MASC (Brighton 2012 and Cambridge 2017).
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Previous winners:
2014 – Oren Scherman (Cambridge)
2013 – Jonathan R. Nitschke (Cambridge)
2012 – Andrew J Wilson (Leeds)
2011 – Lee Cronin (Glasgow) 2010 – David Smith (York) 2009 – Stephen Faulkner (Oxford) 2008 – Jonathan W. Steed (Durham) |
2007 – James H. R. Tucker (Birmingham)
2006 – Thorfinnur Gunnlaugsson (Trinity College Dublin)
2005 – Neil R. Champness (Nottingham) 2004 – Philip A. Gale (Southampton) 2003 – Harry L. Anderson (Oxford) 2002 – Michael J. Hannon (Birmingham) 2001 – Michael D. Ward (Sheffield) |
masc2015 