Ronald George Wreyford Norrish was a distinguished British chemist born in Cambridge on November 9, 1897, who established himself as a leading figure in physical chemistry through his groundbreaking experimental work. Educated at The Perse School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he demonstrated an early passion for chemistry by constructing a personal laboratory in his garden shed with chemicals supplied by his father. His academic journey was interrupted by World War I service in the Royal Field Artillery, during which he was captured and spent time as a prisoner of war in Germany before returning to Cambridge in 1919 to resume his studies. Norrish progressed through the academic ranks at Cambridge, becoming Humphrey Owen Jones Lecturer in Physical Chemistry in 1930, and ultimately succeeded Dr. T.M. Lowry as Professor of Physical Chemistry in 1937, a position he held with distinction until his retirement in 1965 when he assumed the title of Emeritus Professor.
Norrish's most significant contribution to science was the development of flash photolysis in collaboration with his student George Porter, a revolutionary technique that enabled the observation of extremely short-lived intermediates in chemical reactions. This methodology, developed after World War II, involved using extremely powerful, short bursts of light to trigger chemical reactions and then analyzing the resulting spectral changes to study reaction kinetics occurring in millionths of a second. His work provided unprecedented insight into photochemical processes and reaction mechanisms that had previously been too rapid to observe directly. For these pioneering studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, Norrish, along with Porter and Manfred Eigen, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1967, with the Nobel Committee specifically recognizing their development of techniques using very short pulses of energy to disturb chemical equilibria and study the resulting reactions.
Throughout his career, Norrish cultivated a productive research environment at Cambridge that advanced multiple areas of physical chemistry including combustion, polymerization, and gas kinetics, mentoring numerous students who would go on to make significant contributions to the field. His supervision of Rosalind Franklin, though reportedly marked by some conflict, occurred during her formative years before her groundbreaking work on DNA structure. The scientific community widely recognized Norrish's exceptional experimental skill and energy, with colleagues noting his ability to make significant advances in complex areas of photochemistry. Though he retired from his formal professorship in 1965, his methodological innovations continue to influence chemical kinetics research worldwide, cementing his legacy as one of the most important physical chemists of the twentieth century whose tools remain fundamental to understanding rapid chemical processes.
