David Cole-Hamilton – the perfect academic

Professor David Cole Hamilton

Following his BSc, David Cole-Hamilton stayed in Edinburgh where he was awarded a PhD for a thesis entitled Complexes of Ruthenium, Rhodium and Osmium with some Dithioacid Ligands, which he completed under the guidance of the late Tony Stephenson. He then moved to Imperial College, where he began work as a postdoctoral fellow with Geoffrey Wilkinson, who had been awarded the Nobel Prize only the year before. After just a year, David was awarded a Temporary Lectureship that he held for three years. The period at Imperial was very influential, for not only did it develop further David's interest in ruthenium and rhodium, but it sparked an interest in homogeneous catalysis (in which field David long argued that Wilkinson should have received a second Nobel Prize). This was a very formative time in David's professional life and many of the people who were there at the time (Bradley, Carmona and Chaudret to name just three) have remained life-long friends.

David's industry soon paid off, and in 1978 he began as a Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry in Liverpool and started his independent research career. There, his creativity and imagination soon found expression and he developed projects around photochemical water splitting, metallacycle chemistry, homogeneous Fischer–Tropsch chemistry and the water gas shift reaction. However, early in his time at Liverpool he was recruited by Ken Holliday, the then Professor of Inorganic Chemistry, to a project with the MoD on the synthesis of ultra-pure, main group alkyl compounds and their adducts as precursors for the chemical vapour deposition of III–V and, latterly, II–VI semiconductors. Although main group chemistry was new to him, he threw himself into the project with characteristic energy. A significant appointment was that of postdoctoral fellow Tony Jones, who had recently completed his PhD with Joe Connor at Manchester. Tony was an excellent practical chemist and between them they drove the project forward to such a point that in 1983 Tony left to join Epichem, which had previously been set up as a silane business by Barry Leese and Graham Williams, ex of Air Products. With organometallics, too, Epichem went from strength to strength, becoming the leading supplier of precursor materials for the semiconductor industry. The company – now SAFC Hitech and part of Sigma Aldrich – won five Queen's Awards and retained David as a consultant for several years.

I (DWB) started in Liverpool at exactly the same time as David (David took it as testament to his youthful looks that, on arrival, he was asked to join the student chemical society) and remember well the new young academic demonstrating in ‘Lab 3’. Indeed, his second-year lecture course and tutorials on Crystal Field Theory were pivotal in my decision to follow transition metal chemistry. More than that, I was able to do this under David's supervision and I undertook my BSc project with him on the catalytic preparation of methyl ^tbutyl ether from isobutene and methanol, before going on to complete my PhD in the area of photochemical water splitting. David showed then, as now, a great commitment to and care for the students for whom he was responsible, and he was always generous with his time, knowledge and experience.

David's work attracted a great deal of attention and his clear style of lecturing made him an in-demand conference lecturer and seminar speaker. In 1983 he won the RSC Corday Morgan Medal and Prize and was promoted to Senior Lecturer and then, in 1984, he was awarded the RSC's first Sir Edward Frankland Fellowship. Very much on an upward trend, in 1985 David took the vacant post of Irvine Professor and Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of St Andrews, the place that was to be his professional home for the rest of his career.

David's arrival at St Andrews underpinned a revival in fortunes for the School of Chemistry, which has expanded and improved greatly since then. He was immediately thrust into being Chair of the School, which post he held from 1985 to 1990. He embarked on a radical restructuring of the School's Committees and swept away many of them to produce an ‘administrative light’ culture that has held firm to this day. He was instrumental in supporting the School when it came near to closure, instead leading an expansion, firstly by taking in staff from Stirling's Chemistry Department when it closed and later by recruiting some outstanding new staff. After stepping down from the role of Chair, David held virtually every senior administrative post in the School, including Director of Teaching and two spells as Head of Inorganic Chemistry. He also held a very wide range of posts within the broader University, too. He is always keen to develop new teaching initiatives including, for example, mini projects where undergraduates work intensively together in groups on a research topic. He is a dedicated and inspirational lecturer, with a clarity of thought and expression that wins him many accolades (including the Best Teacher Award, which is a student-led prize). He is especially popular since he makes use of exciting demonstrations to underline the material in his lectures.

David is a wonderful colleague and is much loved by the students. He always has time for them and maintains many long-term connections with past undergraduates and postgraduates. As mentioned above, he is selfless in his work for the School and University, taking on far too many administrative burdens, but always with time for a quiet word of good advice and counsel where needed.

Of course, in addition to his work for the School of Chemistry and the University, he continued to press forward with his research and an appreciation by Peter Maitlis of his many contributions to homogeneous catalysis in particular can be found on the pages following this Preface. His reputation grew further and with this recognition came reward in the form of prizes (e.g. the Royal Society of Chemistry's Tilden Lectureship and Geoffrey Wilkinson Prize Lectureship), election (in 1988) as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, visiting professorships in France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and conference and seminar invitations too numerous to list. Typically, David also gave a great deal back to the community, organising/co-organising countless meetings, giving time as an advisor and, in particular, through his work with the Royal Society of Chemistry. Thus, among his many other contributions, David is about to stand down after four years as an elected member of RSC Council and in July will become President of Dalton Division. Also, appropriately, he was Scientific Editor for Dalton Transactions from 2000 to 2003.

It is then with the greatest of pleasure that we recognise David's many accomplishments with this special Commemorative issue. It has been a delight to be involved since so many people wrote swiftly offering articles and positive comments about him, and it is testament to the affection felt for David that we have some 80 papers from authors across the globe; we would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their willingness to collaborate in this enterprise. We are also extremely grateful for the support of the Editorial Board of Dalton Transactions in agreeing to the organisation of this Commemorative issue and the cooperation and hard work of the RSC staff in pulling it all together.

In a recent conversation, one of David's St Andrews colleagues described him as ‘the perfect academic’. We feel this to be an ideal description and we are confident that this view is echoed by those who have had the privilege to know him and to work with him.

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