John Derek Woollins

J. D. Woollins studied for his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, with Ph.D. supervisors R. Grinter and A. J. Thomson; then he worked as a PDF at UBC, Vancouver, Cullen; Michigan State, Rosenberg, and Leeds, Greenwood, he was appointed as a Lecturer at Imperial in 1984 and moved to the Chair of inorganic chemistry in Loughborough in 1994 and to the Chair of synthetic chemistry at St. Andrews in 1999. His research is largely concerned with the synthesis of new molecules and molecular solids. Apart from developing synthetic methods in inorganic chemistry, the new compounds are of interest for one or more reasons. New sulfur-nitrogen compounds challenge current bonding theories and may be of interest as precursors to S-N polymers. Metalla-sulfur-nitrogen compounds have been prepared as part of a program aimed at developing new low-dimensional conductors. Phosphorus-sulfur and phosphorus-selenium heterocycles have potential in organic synthesis (e.g., the conversion of ketones into thiones and selenones) whilst we have had a long-term interest in metal complexes with phosphorus sulfur ligands because of their use as oil additives. Apart from synthetic chemistry, his group has been active in developing the use of NMR. They have established 14N as a viable method in S-N chemistry both for the characterization of new compounds and for the study of mechanisms in solvents such as liquid ammonia. They have also made extensive use of 15N, 31P, 77Se, 119Te, 195Pt NMR. As part of this work, they have developed some particularly elegant syntheses of 15N labelled S-N and Se-N compounds. Structural techniques are of very great significance and (in common with most inorganic chemists) high-quality X-ray crystallography (carried out in collaboration with A. M. Z. Slawin) has been essential for the success of our work.

Biography Updated on 23 January 2008

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