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Paul Madden (chemist)

British chemist

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ15994608 ↗
Source-derived summary

Paul Anthony Madden (born 10 October 1948) is a British chemist and former Provost of The Queen's College, Oxford.

Early life

Madden attended St Bede's Grammar School, a Catholic boys' grammar school in Bradford, Yorkshire, England. He gained BSc and DPhil degrees in chemistry at the University of Sussex. His doctoral thesis was titled "Reactive Scattering Calculations" and was completed in 1974.

Career

From 1981 to 1984 he worked at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment in Malvern, Worcestershire.

From 1984 until 2005 he was Fellow in Chemistry at The Queen's College, Oxford and also Senior Tutor of the college and Chairman of the University Information Technology Committee. From 2004 until 2008 he was Professor of Physical Chemistry and Director of Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions at the University of Edinburgh. He took up the office of Provost of The Queen's College on 2 August 2008 and was succeeded by Dr Claire Craig CBE on 2 August 2019.

He was awarded the Mulliken Medal of the University of Chicago for his achievements in Theoretical and Physical Chemistry. He has served as Miller Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Paul Madden (chemist)” as british chemist. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1948, 1974, 1981, 1984—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1948-10-10. The account is most persuasive where Paul, Madden and chemist can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as british chemist. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15994608. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1974, 1981 and 1984.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Paul Madden (chemist)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.