Chemists are essential – they invent everything from new medicines to new materials. Everything around us is made up of infinitesimally small particles known as atoms. Chemists seek to understand how the behaviour of a material is influence by the way different atoms are arranged together in the material.
Facts:
The School of Chemistry is based in the Haworth Building, which is named after Sir Norman Haworth, who was Head of Department at Birmingham between 1925 and 1948. He was one of the UK’s greatest Chemists; he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1937 for his ground-breaking research into Vitamin C and carbohydrates.
The 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to another former Head of Department, Sir Fraser Stoddart, for his contribution to the chemistry of molecular machines.