John Derek Woollins

FRSC FRSE
Alma materUniversity of East Anglia
Known forWoollins' reagent
AwardsRoyal Society of Chemistry Edward Frankland Fellowship and Main Group Medal
Scientific career
FieldsChemistry
InstitutionsUniversity of St Andrews
Imperial College London
Loughborough University
ThesisMetal complexes containing sulphur-nitrogen ligands (1979)
Doctoral advisorProf Andrew J Thomson and Roger Grinter
Websitehttps://risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/j-derek-woollins.html

John Derek Woollins FRSC FRSE is a chemist who was Provost of Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi having previously been Vice Principal (Research and Innovation), Provost of St Leonard's College, at the University of St Andrews.[1][2][3][4] Woollins' reagent is named after him.

He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry since 1994[5] and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh since 2002.[5] Prior to being appointed Vice Principal of Research, Woollins was the Head of Chemistry[6] for two terms. He has been a visiting professor at various institutes.

Early life and education

Woollins grew up in Cleethorpes, the second youngest of four sons. He was educated at Clee Grammar School for Boys, where he attended the sixth form. He then attended the University of East Anglia graduating with a BSc in 1976 and PhD in 1979.

Career

He did postdoc work under William R Cullen at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, before working with Barnett Rosenberg in Michigan. His work with Rosenberg included work on Cisplatin, an early chemotherapy drug. He came up with a procedure to verify the concentration of transplatin, a harmful isomer, was less than 1ppm.[7] He returned to the United Kingdom where he worked under Norman Greenwood at the University of Leeds before becoming a lecturer at Imperial College London. He became a professor at Loughborough University prior to joining the University of St Andrews.[8] Woollins has been a visiting professor at Australian National University, University of Auckland and most recently Nanjing University of Technology.[9] Initially Woollins was Head of Research of the School of Chemistry at St.Andrews University, before two successful terms as Head of Chemistry. After this he was appointed Vice Principal of Research, a post he held for five years. From September 2019 he became Provost at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi; he left this post in April 2020.

Academic Work

Professor Derek Woollins is known for his work on the synthesis, determination of structure and applications of new molecules made with main group elements of the Periodic Table, where his work has focused on Sulfur, Selenium and Tellurium. He has also done work on Nitrogen and Phosphorus.[10] Major achievements have been the development of rational synthetic routes, the preparation of molecular systems with unusual structures and properties and the development of main group compounds as reagents for organic chemistry. His work on sulfur-nitrogen rings and cages, as well as selenium and tellurium chemistry, has led to development of new molecular devices including precursors to new single source II-VI semiconductors.[11] His development of imidophosphinate ligands has contributed to possible alternatives to the acidic sulfur-phosphorus reagents dithiophosphinic acids (such as cyanex301) and the thiophosphinic acids (such as cyanex302) which are used as metal extraction agents in ore processing and other sectors where the solvent extraction of metals is needed. So far the extractants such as dithioimidodiphosphinates have not been used widely in industrial processes. Derek's work on phosphorus-sulfur and phosphorus-selenium chemistry resulted in Woollins' reagent that has been manufactured on a commercial scale for use in organic synthesis.[12] Professor Woollins worked on the catalytic removal of hydrogen sulfide from air which is of considerable industrial and environmental significance,[13] and has done a range of work on molecular scaffolding.[14][15]

Derek Woollins's past PhD students include Ivan Parkin, Stephen M. Aucott, Pravat Bhattacharyya, Paul Kelly, Robin Keyte, Mark Foreman, Tuan Ly and Paul T. Wood. Ivan Parkin, Paul Kelly, Mark Foreman and Paul Wood are working as academics at UCL, Loughborough, Chalmers and Cambridge universities respectively.

Awards

Woollins has received various awards for his work. In 1990 he was awarded the Sir Edward Franklin award by the Royal Society of Chemistry for his work on Organometallic chemistry.[16] In 1997 the Royal Society of Chemistry again recognized Woollins' contribution by awarding him the Main Group Metals medal, for his contributions to Sulfur Chemistry.[17]

Published works

He has written several books on chemistry, the most popular of which is Inorganic Experiments, first published in 1994 and which has four editions to date. He has also worked as an editor of many other books.[18] Woollins has over 500 papers published.[19][20] A Web of Science search in December 2020 indicates that he has published 579 papers. He has an h-index of 53 according to Google Scholar.[21]

References

  1. ↑ "Principal's Office". www.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 23 October 2018.
  2. ↑ "Prof J Derek Woollins Research Group". chemistry.st-and.ac.uk. Retrieved 26 January 2014.
  3. ↑ "European Academy of Sciences - List of Members". eurasc.org. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  4. ↑ "Provost of St Leonard's College | University of St Andrews". www.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 6 May 2017.
  5. 1 2 Prof J Derek Woollins Research Group
  6. ↑ Prof J Derek Woollins Research Group
  7. ↑ Woollins, J.Derek; Rosenberg, Barnett (1983). "The detection of trace amounts of trans-Pt(NH3)2Cl2 in the presence of cis-Pt(NH3)2Cl2. A high performance liquid chromatographic application of kurnakow's test". Polyhedron. 2 (3): 175–178. doi:10.1016/S0277-5387(00)83954-6.
  8. ↑ "Account Suspended" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 March 2014. Retrieved 13 October 2014.
  9. ↑ "Visiting Professorship Conferring Ceremony on Prof. Derek Woollins and Prof. Ifor Samuel of University of St Andrews Held in NanjingTech-NanJing Tech University". Archived from the original on 2 March 2016. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
  10. ↑ Nordheider, Andreas; Chivers, Tristram; Schön, Oliver; Karaghiosoff, Konstantin; Athukorala Arachchige, Kasun S.; Slawin, Alexandra M. Z.; Woollins, J. Derek (2014). "Isolatable Organophosphorus(III)-Tellurium Heterocycles". Chemistry - A European Journal. 20 (3): 704–712. doi:10.1002/chem.201303884. hdl:10023/5925. PMID 24415362.
  11. ↑ Woollins, J. D.; Laitinen, R. S., eds. (2011). Selenium and Tellurium Chemistry From Small Molecules to Biomolecules and Materials. Springer Berlin. ISBN 9783642206986.
  12. ↑ Woollins, J. (2012). "How Not to Discover a New Reagent. The Evolution and Chemistry of Woollins' Reagent". Synlett. 23 (8): 1154–1169. doi:10.1055/s-0031-1290665. hdl:10023/4577.
  13. ↑ Hua, Guoxiong; Zhang, Qingzhi; McManus, Derek; Slawin, Alexandra M. Z.; Woollins, J. Derek (2006). "Novel non-aqueous Fe(III)/Fe(II) redox couple for the catalytic oxidation of hydrogen sulfide to sulfur by air". Dalton Transactions (9): 1147–1156. doi:10.1039/B513384J. PMID 16482350.
  14. ↑ Woollins, J. Derek (2010). "Phosphorus Heterocycles II Phosphorus Heterocycles II . Edited by Raj Kumar Bansal (University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, India)". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 132 (39): 13950. doi:10.1021/ja107961j. From the Series, Topics in Heterocyclic Chemistry, 21. Edited by R. R. Gupta . Springer-Verlag: Berlin, Heidelberg. 2010. xxii + 210 pp. $259. ISBN 978-3-642-12253-8
  15. ↑ Do, Truong Giang; Hupf, Emanuel; Nordheider, Andreas; Lork, Enno; Slawin, Alexandra M. Z.; Makarov, Sergey G.; Ketkov, Sergey Yu.; Mebs, Stefan; Woollins, J. Derek; Beckmann, Jens (2015). "Intramolecularly Group 15 Stabilized Aryltellurenyl Halides and Triflates". Organometallics. 34 (21): 5341–5360. doi:10.1021/acs.organomet.5b00813. hdl:10023/9730.
  16. ↑ RSC Sir Edward Frankland Fellowship Previous Winners
  17. ↑ RSC Main Group Chemistry Award Previous Winners
  18. ↑ Books by J. Derek Woollins (Author of Basic Atomic and Molecular Spectroscopy)
  19. ↑ J Derek Woollins – Research publications – University of St Andrews
  20. ↑ "Woollins". Google Scholar. Retrieved 25 April 2019.
  21. ↑ "Woollins". Google Scholar. Retrieved 19 June 2021.
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