Distinguished friends
Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia
Riz Ahmed
Sughra Ahmed
Keith Ajegbo
George Alagiah
Claire Alexander
Peter Atkins
Julian Baggini
Richard Beswick
Dinesh Bhugra
Karan Bilimoria
Geoffrey Bindman
Karen Blackett
Nicholas Blake
Ian Blatchford
David Blunkett
Achim Borchardt-Hume
Mihir Bose
Alain de Botton
John Bowers
Des Browne
Rickie Burman
Paul Canoville
Saimo Chahal
Reeta Chakrabarti
Shami Chakrabarti
Stephen Claypole
Robin Cohen
Linda Colley
David Crystal
Angélica Dass
Prakash Daswani
Navnit Dholakia
Ibrahim Dogus
Lloyd Dorfman
Alf Dubs
John Dyson
Damien Egan
Shreela Flather
Daniel Franklin
Edie Friedman
Manjit Singh Gill
Teresa Graham
Susie Harries
Naomie Harris
James Hathaway
David Hencke
Sophie Herxheimer
Afua Hirsch
Michael Howard
Clive Jacobs
Kevin Jennings
Adrian Johns
Shobu Kapoor
Jackie Kay
Ayub Khan-Din
Francesca Klug
Tony Kushner
Kwasi Kwarteng
Kwame Kwei-Armah
David Kynaston
Brian Lambkin
Mark Lewisohn
Joanna Lumley
Michael Mansfield
Sue McAlpine
Neil Mendoza
David Miles
Abigail Morris
Hugh Muir
Tessa Murdoch
Sandy Nairne
Bushra Nasir
Susheila Nasta
Eithne Nightingale
John O’Farrell
Kenneth Olisa
Kunle Olulode
David Olusoga
Julia Onslow-Cole
John Orna-Ornstein
Herman Ouseley
Ruth Padel
Panikos Panayi
Bhikhu Parekh
Nikesh Patel
David Pearl
Caryl Phillips
Mike Phillips
Trevor Phillips
Sunand Prasad
Aubrey Rose
Michael Rosen
Cathy Ross
Salman Rushdie
Jill Rutter
Philippe Sands
Konrad Schiemann
Richard Scott
Stephen Sedley
Maggie Semple
Saira Shah
Babita Sharma
Nikesh Shukla
Jon Snow
Robert Soning
David Spence
Danny Sriskandarajah
Stelio Stefanou
Dick Taverne
Robert Tombs
Rumi Verjee
Patrick Vernon
Edmund de Waal
Iqbal Wahhab
Yasmin Waljee
Jake Wallis Simons
David Warren
Iain Watson
Henning Wehn
Janet Whitaker
Gary Younge
Benjamin Zephaniah
Many people are understandably ambiguous when it comes to migration, and in particular immigration. It is hugely important to emphasise the positive aspects of immigration, and the Museum will show what remarkable contributions to our intellectual and cultural life have sprung from it.
Peter Atkins
Professor Peter Atkins began his academic life as an undergraduate at the University of Leicester, and remained there for his PhD. He then went to the University of California, Los Angeles as a Harkness Fellow and returned to Oxford as lecturer in physical chemistry and fellow of Lincoln College in 1965, where he remained as professor of chemistry until his retirement in 2007. He has received honorary doctorates from universities in the United Kingdom (Leicester), the Netherlands (Utrecht), and Russia (Mendeleev University, Moscow, and Kazan State Technological University) and has been a visiting professor at universities in France, Japan, China, New Zealand, and Israel.
His research was in the application of quantum mechanics to chemical problems and theoretical aspects of magnetic resonance, but with time he drifted into writing books, which now number nearly 70. The best known of these is Physical Chemistry, now in its ninth edition; it is used throughout the world and has been translated into many languages. His other major textbooks include Inorganic Chemistry, Molecular Quantum Mechanics, Physical Chemistry for the Life Sciences, Elements of Physical Chemistry, and various flavours of General Chemistry.
He also writes books on science for the general public, including The Periodic Kingdom, The Second Law, Creation Revisited, and Galileo’s Finger: the ten great ideas of science. One of these books, Molecules, was described as ‘one of the most beautiful chemistry books ever written’. His most recent book of this kind is What is Chemistry?
In his spare time he is deeply involved in a variety of international activities, including (until the end of 2005) chairing the Committee on Chemistry Education of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry – the governing body of the subject – which has the task of improving chemical education worldwide, especially in developing countries, and encouraging and coordinating international efforts towards the public appreciation of chemistry. He also helped to organize the ‘Malta’ series of conferences, which bring together chemists from all over the Middle East. He has been a member of the Council of the Royal Institution and of the Royal Society of Chemistry.