Professor of Physical Chemistry (Cambridge)
academic title at the University of Cambridge
The Professorship of Physical Chemistry is a permanently-established professorship at the University of Cambridge, created in 1920.For the first six decades of its existence, the incumbent was also Head of the Department of Physical Chemistry – a separate entity from the then Department of Chemistry, albeit latterly occupying the same building in Lensfield Road. Following the merger of these two departments in the early 1980s, holders of this Chair have often served as head of the current unified Department of Chemistry.
Occupants of the chair to date have been:
Martin Lowry (1920–1936),proposed the Brønsted–Lowry acid–base theory
Ronald G. W. Norrish (1937–1965),Nobel laureate in Chemistry (1967), developed the Norrish reaction
Jack Linnett (1965-1975),Master of Sidney Sussex College (1970–1975) Vice-Chancellor (1973–1975), proposed the Linnett double-quartet theory
John Meurig Thomas (1978–1987),Master of Peterhouse (1993–2002), Royal Medallist (2016), a founder of solid-state chemistry
Sir David King (1988–2006),Master of Downing College (1995–2000), Government Chief Scientific Adviser (2000–2008), chair of Independent SAGE (2020–)
John Pyle (2007–2018),Davy Medallist (2018), co-chair of the scientific assessment panel for the Montreal Protocol
Tuomas Knowles (2023–), Corday-Morgan Prize recipient (awarded in 2017)
In addition to the 1920 professorship, the university established a second Professorships of Physical Chemistry for a single tenure (i.e. as personal chair) for Brian Thrush, who held the office from 1978 to 1995.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Professor of Physical Chemistry (Cambridge)” is academic title at the University of Cambridge. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Professor, Physical and Chemistry, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q65067833. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1920, 1936, 1937 and 1965.
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This entry incorporates text from “Professor of Physical Chemistry (Cambridge)” 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.