‘I was heading back to University College but Ron died while I was on the ship going over’, he recalled. Every peak in an IR spectrum was reported in publications, a very rare practice at that time or subsequently.’Ī new research direction opened up in the 70s after Glen discovered rare earths during a sabbatical. ‘If IR spectra of a solid clearly indicated a change from the two reactants, he still insisted on Bruce would later write in the department’s 1986 Silver Jubilee Commemoration booklet that Glen’s background in organometallic and coordination chemistry of main group metals would bring ‘this important interest to strengthen both teaching and research in the department.’Īllan Canty (now Emeritus Professor, University of Tasmania) joined Glen’s group in the late 60s to explore weak coordination interactions in organomercury complexes and remembers Glen’s exceptional attention to detail. Glen was appointed to a Monash lectureship in 1966, two years after Bruce West became the Inorganic Chair. This collaborative work led to an interest in decarboxylation reactions.’ I was supposed to be making TlII compounds with Tl–Tl bonds, but did mostly fluoroaryl chemistry of thallium as well as fluorocarbon mercury synthesis in collaboration with Alywn Davies, who was an outstanding organometallic chemist. ‘He didn’t care too much what you did so long as you wrote it up and put his name on it. Several years of subsequent postdoccing further inspired a life-long interest in main group metals, and included three years at University College London with Ron Nyholm. ‘I was supposed to study reactions of phosphines with CF3I, but ended up doing mostly mercury coordination chemistry.’ Needless to say, time in the lab wasn’t restricted to only doing unknowns!’ Glen later completed his PhD with Bruce West at the University of Adelaide. ‘By the end of the year, I probably did 60 of these, learning a lot of chemistry. Glen’s curiosity in inorganic chemistry developed towards the end of high school when students were permitted to perform cation/anion analyses in the lab after school – unsupervised. Something like that was bound to impress a young student.’ He would wait until the solvent evaporated, turn to the fume cupboard and announce “Now!” and there would be this almighty explosion. His showpiece was adding phosphorus in CS2 to a mixture of potassium perchlorate and sugar. A high school teacher, Sid Eberhard, motivated his interest in chemistry. ‘My mother was a school teacher and my father was the numismatologist at the art gallery who, as editor of a coin journal, probably published more than I have!’ recalled Glen, when we spoke last December, and who has accumulated almost 600 refereed publications to date. Glen Deacon was born in the Adelaide suburb of Unley, in 1936, to parents with no science background. How could a student contemplating honours not consider collaborating with an educator so willingly complicit in such a delightfully bizarre scheme? Photo shoot complete, I dashed off to a friend with developing and enlarging equipment to produce a splendid 8 × 10 black and white print, which was promptly signed by Glen, framed, wrapped and presented to its intended recipient that same evening to much acclaim. He agreed, posing at his desk holding a copy of the faux volume I was a teenage spectroscopist (in reality, a chemistry book recovered in brown paper and retitled in hastily handwritten black lettering). And while the booming voice and no-nonsense lectures could be intimidating, he could also appreciate (and dispense) a dose of humour.Īs an undergrad myself in 1976 and knowing ‘Dr Deacon’ as an encouraging third-year lab instructor, I barged into his office on 15 September that year to persuade him to be photographed for a gag gift I was preparing for a fellow chemistry student’s birthday. Glen – who was last year recognised for 50 years of service as an educator and researcher at Monash – had a bit of a tough teacher undergrad reputation due to the blistering fast pace of his inorganic lectures.My response to such queries was usually straightforward: ‘If you have an interest in chemistry, work with someone who has a passion for it.’ Glen had – and at 81 still has – that hunger for scientific inquiry. As a PhD candidate in the Monash University Chemistry Department from the late 1970s to the early 80s, I was occasionally interrogated by undergraduate students enquiring why I chose to work with Glen Deacon.
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