Charles Rees
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199504410
2008-03-20T02:34:12Z
DuncanHill
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dab [[FRS]] to [[Fellow of the Royal Society]]
[[image:Rees1.jpg|thumb|right|Prof Charles W. Rees]]
'''Charles Wayne Rees''' [[Order of the British Empire|CBE]] [[Fellow of the Royal Society|FRS]] ([[15 October]] [[1927]] – [[21 September]] [[2006]]) was a [[UK|British]] [[Organic chemistry|organic chemist]].
Rees was born in [[Egypt]], but educated in England at Farnham Grammar School. After three years as a laboratory technician at the [[Royal Aircraft Establishment]] he went to University College at [[Southampton]] (later the University of Southampton) where he graduated in 1950. He took his Ph.D. there with Professor A. Albert of the [[Australian National University]] - at [[Euston Road]], [[London]].
He was then appointed Assistant Lecturer at [[Birkbeck, University of London|Birkbeck College, London]] in 1955 (moving in at the bottom as Professor [[Derek Barton]] moved out at the top to take up the Regius Chair in [[Glasgow]]). After two years at Birkbeck, Dr. Rees moved to [[King's College London]] where he spent eight years as Lecturer/Reader.
He collaborated for several years with Professor [[Donald Hey]] on various aspects of [[Heterocyclic compound|heterocyclic chemistry]]. He was appointed to his first Chair at the [[University of Leicester]] in 1965, and four years later moved to the [[University of Liverpool]] as Professor of Organic Chemistry, and in 1977 he succeeded Professor [[George Kenner]] there as Heath Harrison Professor of Organic Chemistry. In 1978, he was appointed [[August Wilhelm von Hofmann|Hofmann]] Professor of Organic Chemistry at [[Imperial College London]] and remained there until his retirement in 1993.
Professor Rees' research interests ranged widely over mechanistic and synthetic organic chemistry. Much of his work was concerned with [[heterocyclic]] chemistry, particularly the synthesis and chemistry of new [[heterocyclic]] rings, with an emphasis on [[aromatic]] and [[antiaromatic]] rings, and the role of [[reactive intermediate]]s in heterocyclic chemistry. Recently, he had been working on heterocyclic systems with unusually high proportions of [[nitrogen]] and [[sulfur]] heteroatoms. He published about 480 papers in the scientific literature.
He was the [[Royal Society of Chemistry]]'s [[Tilden]] Lecturer in 1974, and the [[Pedler]] Lecturer in 1984, and received the (first) RSC Award in Heterocyclic Chemistry in 1980 and the International award in Heterocyclic Chemistry in 1995. He was elected a fellow of the [[Royal Society]] in 1974. He was awarded an Honorary D.Sc. by the University of Leicester in 1994 and a CBE in the [[British honours system|New Years Honours]] list in 1995.
Professor Rees was the President of the [[Royal Society of Chemistry]] from July 1992 for two years. He has served on its Council and many Boards and Committees at various times; he was Chair of the Publication and Information Board for four years. He was President of the Perkin Division of the RSC, and President of the Chemistry Association for the Advancement of Science.
Amongst the many and diverse contributions to chemistry he made, his two papers describing the brilliantly conceived generation of [[benzyne]] and [1,8]-dehydronaphthalene by the [[lead(IV) acetate]] oxidation of N-amino heterocycles are considered classic papers from this era.
He died on [[21 September]] [[2006]] of undisclosed causes.
==References==
#C. D. Campbell and C. W. Rees, Oxidation of 1- and 2-aminobenzotriazole, ''Chem. Commun'', 1965, 192. DOI: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C19650000192 10.1039/C19650000192]
#C. W. Rees and R. C. Storr, 1,8-Dehydronaphthalene (peri-naphthalyne), ''Chem. Commun.'', 1965, 193. DOI: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C19650000193 10.1039/C19650000193]
# [http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/video/index.rss Video podcast of Rees talking about contemporary heterocyclic chemistry]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rees, Charles}}
[[Category:1927 births]]
[[Category:2006 deaths]]
[[Category:Academics of Birkbeck, University of London]]
[[Category:Academics of King's College London]]
[[Category:Academics of Imperial College London]]
[[Category:Academics of the University of Leicester]]
[[Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire]]
[[Category:English chemists]]
[[Category:Fellows of the Royal Society]]
[[Category:People associated with the University of Liverpool]]