| George Porter  Born: 6-Dec-1920
Birthplace: Stainforth, Yorkshire, England
Died: 31-Aug-2002
Location of death: Canterbury, Kent, England
Cause of death: unspecified
Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Chemist Nationality: England
Executive summary: Rapid chemical and biological processes Military service: Royal Navy (Radar Group Officer, 1941-45) For his work on light-driven chemical reactions, British chemist George Porter was knighted and shared the 1967 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Manfred Eigen and Ronald G. W. Norrish. In 1947, Porter and Norrish designed a device that uses flash photolysis (rapid-fire light pulses) to illuminate gaseous free radicals and combustion through spectrophotometry. He also studied matrix stabilization and radical trapping, and hosted three science series on the BBC, The Laws of Disorder (1965-66), Time Machines (1969-70), and The Natural History of a Sunbeam (1976-77). He is the namesake and in 1988 became the first recipient of the Porter Medal for Photochemistry, awarded biannually by a coalition of the European Photochemistry Association, the Inter-American Photochemistry Society, and the Asian and Oceanian Photochemistry Association. Father: John Smith Porter (construction worker)
Mother: Alice Ann Roebuck
Wife: Stella Jean Brooke (m. 25-Aug-1949, two sons)
Son: John Brooke Porter (physician, b. 22-Sep-1952)
Son: Andrew Christopher George Porter (physician, b. 17-Aug-1955)
High School: Thorne Grammar School, Doncaster, Yorkshire, England (1938)
University: BS Chemistry, University of Leeds (1941)
Scholar: Chemistry, Cambridge University (1945-52)
Fellow: Emmanuel College, Cambridge University (1952-54)
Professor: Physical Chemistry, University of Sheffield (1955-63)
Professor: Firth Professor of Chemistry, University of Sheffield (1963-66)
Administrator: Chancelor, University of Leicester (1986-95)
Professor: Photochemistry, Imperial College London (1987-2002)
RSC Corday-Morgan Prize 1955
Nobel Prize for Chemistry 1967 (with Manfred Eigen and Ronald G. W. Norrish)
BIR Silvanus Thompson Medal 1968
Davy Medal 1971
Knighthood of the Order of the Thistle, 1972
UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science 1977
Jagadis Chandra Bose Medal 1977
Rumford Medal 1978
IET Faraday Medal 1980
RSC Longstaff Prize 1981
EI Melchett Medal 1987
Porter Medal for Photochemistry 1988
Order of Merit 1989
Life Peerage 1990, as Baron Porter of Luddenham
Faraday Prize 1991
Copley Medal 1992
British Rayon Research Association in Manchester, Physicist, 1954-55
American Academy of Arts and Sciences Foreign Member, 1979
American Philosophical Society Foreign Member, 1986
British Association for the Advancement of Science President, 1985-86
British Chemical Society President, 1970-72
British Institute of Radiology
British Museum Trustee, 1972-74
German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina Foreign Member, 1970
Knights Templar
National Academy of Sciences Foreign Associate, 1974
New York Academy of Sciences Foreign Member, 1968
Pontifical Academy of Sciences 1974
Royal Institution of Great Britain Director, 1966-85
Royal Institution of Great Britain Fullerian Professor of Chemistry, 1966-87
Royal Society 1960
Royal Society President, 1985-90
Royal Society of Chemistry President, 1970-72
Royal Society of Edinburgh Foreign Member, 1983
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