Polly Arnold

Education

Arnold was educated at Notting Hill and Ealing High School and Westminster School.[1] She studied chemistry at Brasenose College, Oxford (BA) and worked with Dermot O’Hare and Matthew Rosseinsky.[8] She moved to the University of Sussex for postgraduate research where her Doctor of Philosophy degree was supervised by Geoffrey Cloke.[3][8]

Research and career

Arnold's research focuses on exploratory synthetic chemistry, particularly in making complexes that exhibit unusual structure-bonding in early transition metal, and lanthanide and actinide chemistry. Such knowledge underpins the discovery of catalysts and our understanding of the behaviour of nuclear waste.[11][7]

Structure of C6H6[U(Ntms2)2]2 from Arnold's lab[12]

Arnold was a Fulbright Program postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she worked with Christopher C. Cummins before returning to the UK to a lectureship in 1999.[4] Her research is focused on the design and synthesis of highly reactive f-block complexes that can activate inert small molecules such as carbon oxides, dinitrogen, and hydrocarbons, and that can provide fundamental information on structure and bonding at the bottom of the periodic table.[4][13][14][15]

Arnold has given lectures around the world, advised the government and industry, and appears regularly on mainstream media and social media[16] to discuss the importance and benefits of diversity in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce.[4]

Awards and honours

Arnold was awarded the Rosalind Franklin Award in 2012 for her scientific achievements, and her suitability as a role model and proposal to promote women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).[17] This award was used to fund the creation of the documentary film A Chemical Imbalance, where she is the executive producer.[17] That same year, she was also awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry's Corday-Morgan Prize for her "outstanding contributions to the application of organometallic uranium chemistry to small molecule activation".[18] In 2012 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE).[19]

She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to chemistry and women in STEM.[20]

In 2018, she was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson award for her work on transuranic organometallic chemistry, and is so far, the only woman to have been awarded this award since its inception in 1999.[21] She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018 for substantial contributions to the improvement of natural knowledge.[4]

References
  1. Anon (2019). "Arnold, Prof. Polly Louise". Who's Who. ukwhoswho.com (online Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U289559. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
  2. Polly Arnold publications indexed by Google Scholar
  3. Arnold, Polly Louise (1997). Low valent and low co-ordinate complexes of transition metals and lanthanides. jisc.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Sussex. OCLC 53644787. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.388646. Archived from the original on 9 February 2019. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  4. Anon (2018). "Professor Polly Arnold OBE FRS". royalsociety.org. London: Royal Society. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    “All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies at the Wayback Machine (archived 2016-11-11)
  5. Chapman, Kit (13 January 2020). "Polly Arnold's diversity of interests". Chemistry World. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
  6. "Polly L. Arnold | College of Chemistry". chemistry.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
  7. "Professor Polly L Arnold". University of Edinburgh. Archived from the original on 7 December 2013. Retrieved 3 December 2013.
  8. "Polly Arnold - EPSRC website". epsrc.ukri.org.
  9. Polly Arnold's ORCID 0000-0001-6410-5838
  10. Polly Arnold publications from Europe PubMed Central
  11. Furno, Franck; Morley, Kelly S.; Wong, Ben; Sharp, Barry L.; Arnold, Polly L.; Howdle, Steven M.; Bayston, Roger; Brown, Paul D.; Winship, Peter D.; Reid, Helen J. (2004). "Silver nanoparticles and polymeric medical devices: a new approach to prevention of infection?". Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. 54 (6): 1019–1024. doi:10.1093/jac/dkh478. ISSN 1460-2091. PMID 15537697.
  12. P. L. Arnold, S.M. Mansell, L. Maron, D. McKay (2012). "Spontaneous reduction and C–H borylation of arenes mediated by uranium(III) disproportionation". Nature Chemistry. 4 (8): 668–74. Bibcode:2012NatCh...4..668A. doi:10.1038/nchem.1392. hdl:20.500.11820/387cd4f7-3c63-466b-b017-f87f6a345ee1. PMID 22824900.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  13. Arnold, Polly L.; Pearson, Stephen (2007). "Abnormal N-heterocyclic carbenes". Coordination Chemistry Reviews. 251 (5–6): 596–609. doi:10.1016/j.ccr.2006.08.006. ISSN 0010-8545.
  14. Arnold, Polly L.; Casely, Ian J. (2009). "F-Block N-Heterocyclic Carbene Complexes". Chemical Reviews. 109 (8): 3599–3611. doi:10.1021/cr8005203. ISSN 0009-2665. PMID 19358527.
  15. Liddle, Stephen T.; Edworthy, Ian S.; Arnold, Polly L. (2007). "Anionic tethered N-heterocyclic carbene chemistry". Chemical Society Reviews. 36 (11): 1732. doi:10.1039/b611548a. ISSN 0306-0012. PMID 18213982.
  16. Polly Arnold on Twitter
  17. Arnold, Polly (2012). "A Chemical Imbalance". chemicalimbalance.ed.ac.uk. RSE/University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 3 December 2013.
  18. "Corday-Morgan Prize 2012 Winner". rsc.org. Retrieved 16 December 2018.
  19. "Professor Polly Louise Arnold OBE, FRSE". rse.org.uk. Royal Society of Edinburgh. Retrieved 15 June 2018.
  20. "No. 61962". The London Gazette (Supplement). 17 June 2017. p. B10.
  21. "RSC Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson Award 2018 Winner". rsc.org. Retrieved 13 May 2018.
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