What can chemistry do to mitigate global warming and climate change? That’s the question Dr. Robert H. Crabtree, the Department of Chemistry’s 27th Job Visiting Professor, will discuss when he gives a public lecture next month.

Dr. Crabtree, a professor with Yale University in Connecticut, will be at Memorial University from July 6-8 for a series of public and research lectures as part of the Job Lecture Series.

Dr. Robert Lucas, a professor of Chemistry at Memorial, met Dr. Crabtree when they were both students at Oxford University in the 1970s. The pair have continued to meet at conferences around the world during the intervening years and Dr. Lucas is now looking forward to hosting the respected chemist in his home province.

“Bob was a brilliant student and he’s since gone on to a distinguished career,” said Dr. Lucas of his longtime friend. “He is an eminent scientist in his field and has been so for many years. A fine gentleman as well as an outstanding chemist, Bob is an enthusiastic lecturer who is good at communicating his science to the general public.”

Thanks to a bequest from a historically prominent Newfoundland mercantile family, the Chemistry Department is able to finance this annual lecture series. Each year, a distinguished chemist of international repute is invited to join the department for one to two weeks giving faculty and students the opportunity to meet intellectually and socially with some of the most prominent chemists of the day.

Beginning with a trio of research lectures, Dr. Crabtree will first discuss the problem of hydrogen storage and the remarkable chemistry of hydrogen on July 6 at 1 p.m. in the Junior Common Room. A second talk about water splitting in connection with solar energy conversion to fuels will occur July 7 at 10 a.m. in C-2045. Finally, Dr. Crabtree will give his views on alcohol activation in the context of green chemistry and organometallic catalysts in a discussion. That also takes place July 7 at 2 p.m. in C-2045.

A lecture suited to the general public will take place on July 8 at 7 p.m. in the Inco Innovation Centre main lecture theatre, IIC-2001, with a wine and cheese reception to follow. In this talk, Dr. Crabtree will discuss the current thinking on climate change, as well as some of the responses that chemistry offers to mitigate global warming.

Dr. Robert H. Crabtree was educated at New College Oxford and completed his PhD at Sussex University. He spent four years at the CNRS Natural Products Institute and in 1977 he came to the United States as an assistant professor at Yale University, where he is now professor of Chemistry.

Author of a standard textbook in his field, The Organometallic Chemistry of the Transition Metals, 5th edition, Wiley, N.Y., 2009, Dr. Crabtree is also editor in chief of the Comprehensive Organometallic Chemistry-III (with DMP Mingos) and the Encyclopedia of Inorganic Chemistry.