CRYSTAL GROWTH & DESIGN 2007 VOL. 7, NO. 1 2-3
PerspectiVe Associate Editor in Reflection Roger Davey The UniVersity of Manchester, Manchester M60 1QD, United Kingdom ReceiVed NoVember 17, 2006
I am, as far as I know, the first and only scientist in my family. My forebears were fisherman, fireman, skilled printers; my brother a lawyer; my cousin an architect. Where my interest in chemistry arose I do not know, but it was timely in 1960s Britain where new universities were being built, Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson was enthusing over the white heat of technology, and we watched the space race from afar. I was lucky enough to go to a grammar school at which my academic leanings could be developed, and to leave school at a time when governments gave grants for poor boys to go to university. I went to Bristol, not because I had researched its key performance indicators, but because my girlfriend of the moment was also going there. I was not an outstanding student. I was OK, but what I did discover was the excitement of doing researchsa joy that I have never lost. To spread out before me on a table and assimilate in my head all that I and others have learnt about a particular problem, and to transform this matrix of facts into a coherent story is something I have loved doing. I still have my first major attempt at this, my BSc thesis. Conducted under the supervision of Bill Dunning, this was my first introduction to crystal growth and I was hooked. At Bill’s recommendation, I continued my studies at University College, London, in John Mullin’s group. This was an exciting place to be in 1970. John Garside was a staff member and Alan Jones among my contemporaries. The lab had a continual stream of visitors from overseas, many of them crystallization’s scientific heroes of the time. I particularly recall a visit from Piet Bennema; he seemed to be the only person who really understood spiral growth theory and had (and still has) a wonderful way of encouraging young researchers. In 1974, John Mullin and I published the first two papers from my thesis on the growth of the (101) and (100) faces of ammonium dihydrogen phosphate crystals in the presence of ionic species (J. Cryst. Growth 1974, 23, 89-94, and J. Cryst. Growth 1974, 26, 45-51) and I moved to Switzerland to work at the ETH with John Bourne. This was the start of 3 years’ study of the growth of molecular crystals from solutions hexamethylene tetramine and resorcinol. It is worth remembering that if you worked in this area in 1974 there was so little previous work (mostly on sucrose) that you could know all the key references by heart! By the time I joined the Corporate Laboratory of ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) in Cheshire,
U.K., in 1977, I was about to enter one of the great scientific learning periods of my life. At university, I had done what was expected: learned more and more about less and less; I now very quickly found that I needed to know more and more about more and moresexplosives, catalysts, nonlinear optics, pigments, dyes, polymers, pharmaceuticals. It was here that it dawned on me that quite by chance I had stumbled into an area of science of enormous practical importance, and that I began to deal with crystallization as a process operation. The term “physical form”scrystal size, shape, purity, polymorphisms became of far reaching importance. It was here that I first encountered polymorphism and, influenced by Findlay’s 1904 book The Phase Rule, wrote a paper on “The Kinetics of Solvent-Mediated Phase Transformations” (Proc. Roy. Soc. London, Ser. A 1985, 398, 415-428) with my colleague Peter Cardew. Above all, ICI taught me that being clever alone is not enough to make a good scientist; you must be able to communicate your understanding and excite people with it. This was an invigorating and productive period, in which interest in crystal growth was slowly growing and I interacted with the groups at UMIST (John Garside) and Strathclyde (John
10.1021/cg068016+ CCC: $37.00 © 2007 American Chemical Society Published on Web 12/15/2006
Perspective
Sherwood, Kevin Roberts). With UMIST, we worked on melt crystallization, and with Strathclyde, on nonlinear optic materials, secondary nucleation, and surface diffraction. During this period, my colleague Simon Black and I became industrial supervisors of Rob Docherty who, under Kevin Roberts’ supervision, developed the HABIT code for morphology prediction. In the early ‘90s, after a close shave with a city speculator, ICI split into two businesses and the world of corporate research came to an abrupt end. After a short spell in the pharma business at Zeneca (now AstraZeneca), I decided it was time to return to academia to pursue my research interests. I was fortunate to be appointed to a position in the School of Chemical Engineering at UMIST and worked with John Garside’s support to
Crystal Growth & Design, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2007 3
develop a new research group. This fortuitously coincided with the Zantac patent cases, which I still believe did more than anything to raise awareness of crystallization and crystal chemistry in the pharma industry. Since then, I have enjoyed the support of many industrial and academic colleagues in my attempts to move the science of crystal chemistry and nucleation forward. I was lucky enough to win an EPSRC senior fellowship and become frequently welcomed by my friends around the world. I have been blessed with what has seemed like an endless stream of energetic and highly able students and postdocs, but above all I have had the support, laughter, and love of my wonderful family. CG068016+
