Research students

Recrystallisation. The process of purification by recrystallisation is undoubtedly the most frequent operation in practical organic chemistry, and it is one which, when cleanly and efficiently performed, should give great pleasure to the chemist, particularly if the original crude material is in a very impure and filthy condition. Yet no operation is carried out so badly, wastefully (and thoughtlessly) by students in general, not only by elementary students, but often by research students of several years experience. The student who intends later to do advanced work must master the process, for unless he can choose a suitable solvent and then successfully recrystallise often minute quantities of material, he will frequently find his work completely arrested. 

One of us (C.L.L.C) would specially like to thank her many research students (past and present) for their unwavering support, friendship and loyalty, which enabled her to achieve what she now has. She wishes also to thank her family for their love, and would particularly like to dedicate her contribution towards this book to the memory of her brother Andrew who had said that he should have been a scientist. 

By its nature, the present treatment is not exhaustive, nor do we claim that any of the methods taken from the literature are the best possible. Nevertheless, we feel that the information contained in this book is likely to be helpful to a wide range of laboratory workers, including physical and inorganic chemists, research students, biochemists, and biologists. We hope that it will also be of use, although perhaps to only a limited extent, to experienced organic chemists. 

Hawthorne eventually wrote up his MIT notes for a paper with his research student, Graham de Vahl Davis [16], but it is really Will Hawthorne who should have written this book. So I dedicate it to him, one of several great engineering teachers, including Keenan, Taylor and Shapiro, who graced the mechanical engineering department at MIT when I was there as a young assistant professor. 

All the early work was concerned with atoms, with Sir William Hartree regarded as the father of the technique. His son, Douglas R. Hartree, published the definitive book, The Calculation of Atomic Structures, in 1957, and in this he derived the atomic HF equations and described numerical algorithms for their solution. Charlotte Froese Fischer was a research student working under the guidance of D. R. Hartree, and she published her own definitive book. The Hartree—Fock Method for Atoms A Numerical Approach in 1977. The Appendix lists a number of freely available atomie structure programs. Most of these can be obtained from the Computer Physics Communications Program Library. 

The author wishes to acknowledge the efforts of his various research students from whose work some of the applications presented here have been drawn. In particular, I have enjoyed the excellent partnership in the pioneering PhD research of Mr (now Dr) Russell Kinghom. In addition, the provision of a gas chromatograph by Agilent Technologies and columns from SGE International have enabled our work to progress. 

Last but not least, I am grateful to all the research students and postdoctoral research workers at Reading who have contributed in so many ways to the production of this text. 

I have avoided the problem of referring to my research students by name by mentioning none of them but their experimental work is gratefully acknowledged, and their names can be found in the references given below. I am indebted to them for their indispensable and stimulating collaboration. 

This compilation has been prepared and revised to give access to a wide and up-to-date selection of documented information to research students, practising chemists, safety officers and others concerned with the safe handling and use of reactive chemicals. This will allow ready assessment of the likely potential for reaction hazards which may be associated with an existing or proposed chemical compound or reaction system. 

The author acknowledges the many research students who have made significant contributions to this work as well as invaluable collaborations with Dr. Antonio Bonin, Prof Jeanne Buccigross, Prof Mike Novak, Prof Arvi Rauk and Dr. David Tucker. 

Emil Hardegger always had a very good relationship with his many research students. They, in turn, admired not only his scientific knowledge, but also his overall warmth and human qualities. Emil Hardegger will long be remembered in the scientific community as one of the great carbohydrate and natural-products chemists. 

The results from Evans and his research students included two phenomena which, with hindsight, could be seen to contain a clue to understanding these erratic polymerisations. It was found that the oligomerisations of the dimers were of first order internally but with respect to an asymptote which was not the monomer concentration and which was irreproducible from one experiment to another and occasionally a reaction which had stopped... 

This was his first venture into theorising about unexplained facts. Its central point is an extension of the new idea of co-catalysis and the application of a thermochemical argument to decide which of two reactions is the more likely. This type of argument, which goes back to M. Polanyi and M.G. Evans, was the small change of the tea-room discussions in the Chemistry Department at the University of Manchester, where H.A. Skinner, a thermochemist, was the writer s research supervisor and S.D. Hamann was a fellow research student working under A.G. Evans. 

Examples of other work on research schools M. Eckert, "Sommerfeld s School and the Electron Theory of Metals," HSPS 17 (1987) 191234 Gerald Geison, Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology The Scientific Enterprise in Late Victorian Society (Princeton Princeton University Press, 1978) L. J. Klosterman, "A Research School of Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century Jean Baptiste Dumas and His Research Students," Annals of Science 43 (1985) 180 H. A. M. Snelders, "J. H. van t Hoffs Research School in Amsterdam (18771895)," Janus 71 (1984) 130 F. L. Holmes, "The Formation of the Munich School of Metabolism," in William Coleman and F. L. Holmes, eds., The Investigative Enterprise Studies on Nineteenth-Century Physiology and Medicine (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London University of California Press, 1988). 

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