Prof. J. E. Lennard-Jones

Abstract

THE first occupant of the recently created John Humphrey Plummer chair of inorganic chemistry at Cambridge will be Prof. J. E. Lennard-Jones, of the University of Bristol. During his tenure of office at Bristol, first as reader in theoretical physics and later as professor and first holder of the Melville Wills chair in this subject in the Wills Physical Laboratory, Prof. Lennard-Jones has carried out a number of important investigations in the field of molecular physics. His earlier work on the forces between atoms in gases, and later, in crystals, was of fundamental importance and led him to the study of cohesion and other surface phenomena such as adsorption, as well as the structure of molecules in general. The results that he obtained attracted general attention and were particularly appreciated by physical chemists and metallurgists, both in Great Britain and abroad, because of the light that was thereby thrown upon some of the most fundamental problems of modern chemistry. The post to which Prof. Lennard-Jones has now been appointed affords special opportunities for the continuation of this co-operation between theoretical physicists and chemists, which in the past has been far less marked in Great Britain than on the Continent. On the other hand, the University of Bristol, with which he has been associated for seven years, suffers the loss of an original thinker, a brilliant expositor, and a capable administrator.