George Porter Chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1967 (shared with M. Eigen and R. Norrish). Date of Birth: 06.12.1920 Country: Great Britain

Biography of George Porter

George Porter, an English physical chemist, was born into the family of John Smith Porter and Alice Ann Roback. He received his secondary education and won the Akroyd Scholarship to attend the University of Leeds in 1938 to study chemistry. During his final year, Porter studied radio physics and electronics and became a reserve officer in the Royal Navy as a radar specialist.

After World War II, Porter pursued his doctoral research at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, under the guidance of R. Norrish, a pioneer in the field of photochemical investigations of chemically active molecules. Norrish and Porter focused on studying the chemistry of ultra-fast chemical reactions. They developed the method of flash photolysis, which allowed them to study reactions that occurred within a few thousandths of a second. This method involved using a powerful short-wavelength light pulse to induce the decomposition of a photosensitive chemical substance into chemically active intermediate compounds. A second, weaker light pulse, created after a known time interval, illuminated the reaction zone, allowing the researchers to determine the absorption spectra of unstable free radicals. By varying the interval between the two pulses, Norrish and Porter were able to observe and measure chemical reactions within millionths of a second. They replaced the second pulse with a continuous light source and utilized a light detector to continuously monitor the concentration of specific chemical substances as a function of time during the reaction initiated by the first light pulse. This method enabled the observation and study of free radicals and their chemical behavior for the first time. With this method, the researchers investigated the combustion and decomposition of hydrogen, hydrocarbons, ammonia, hydrogen phosphide, and hydrogen sulfide. They further studied reaction patterns in the condensed phase, which were important for analyzing molecular photoexcitation processes. As a result, they established the kinetic regularities of electron and hydrogen atom transfer.

In 1949, Porter obtained his PhD in Chemistry and was appointed as a Demonstrator in Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. Here, in collaboration with Norrish, he continued to study the behavior of free radicals in ultra-fast chemical reactions. In 1952, he became an Assistant Head of the Physical Chemistry Research Division. In 1954, while serving as an Assistant Head of Research at the British Association for Artificial Silk, Porter worked on problems related to the combustion of textiles. The following year, Porter became a professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Sheffield, where he led the Chemistry Department after earning the title of Chair of Chemistry in 1963.

In Sheffield, Porter applied the flash photolysis method to study the interaction of oxygen with hemoglobin and the properties of chlorophyll in solutions. He refined the method by using pulsed light sources and lasers, enabling the investigation of chemical reaction mechanisms that were a thousand times faster than previously possible. In 1966, Porter succeeded the 1915 Nobel laureate in Physics, William Lawrence Bragg (1890–1971), as a professor and director of the Faraday Research Laboratory at the Royal Institution in London.

In 1967, Porter and R. Norrish were awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, which are stimulated by disturbances in equilibrium with the aid of very short pulses of energy." The other half was awarded to M. Eigen. Porter enjoyed facilitating connections between scientists from different fields and between scientists and people outside of the scientific community. He served as a consultant for several films and television broadcasts and was involved in numerous committees related to science and education.

Some of Porter's notable works include "The application of flash techniques to the study of fast reactions" (with R. Norrish) published in Discussions of the Faraday Society in 1954, "Chemistry for the Modern World" published in New York in 1962, and "Progress in Reaction Kinetics" published in New York in 1965.