'Throughout the history of science, many important breakthroughs have been made by accident, and some of my most significant results have arguably had an element of chance about them. Given this, how much control over solid-state structures do we really have?'

During this talk, Professor Andrew Burrows will attempt to address this question using examples from his own research.

He'll be shedding light on some of the chemistry he's worked on throughout his career to date, from the transition metal cluster compounds prepared during his DPhil work in Oxford, through the crystal engineering studies carried out at Imperial College and his first few years at Bath, to more recent work with functionalised metal-organic frameworks and porous organic materials.

A recurrent theme in his research has been the interplay between the solid-state structures that have been prepared by design and those that have been obtained by chance.

Speaker profile

Professor Andrew Burrows was born in Ipswich and brought up in Felixstowe. He studied Chemistry at the University of Oxford, graduating with a BA, and then stayed at Oxford for his DPhil, working with Professor Mike Mingos on palladium and platinum cluster chemistry. Following a post-doc position at the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg with Professor Pierre Braunstein, he held a Fixed-Term Lectureship at Imperial College London, before moving to the University of Bath in 1996. He has been at Bath ever since, firstly as Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer, Reader and Professor, the latter from 2016.

Andy has published over 140 papers and has also co-authored the market leading first year undergraduate textbook Chemistry3. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and has been Head of the Department of Chemistry since August 2018.