Professor Richard Bushby

Profile

• B.Sc. and A.R.C.S., Chemistry, IC, London
• D.Phil., Organic Chemistry, Oxford (with ERH Jones and GH Whitham)
• Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Chemistry, QMC London (with BCL Weedon and JHP Utley)
• NATO Postdoctoral Fellow, Organic Chemistry, Yale (with JA Berson)
• Since 1970, School of Chemistry, Leeds
• 1998, Professor of Physical Organic Chemistry
• 1999, Director, SOMS Centre
• Since 2004, Research Professor (now mainly in Physics)

Research interests

My background and training were in Physical Organic Chemistry and initially my research concentrated on fairly traditional Physical Organic themes: carbanion ion pairs and pi-biradicals. However, as this kind of work became increasingly difficult to fund in the UK, the focus of my research shifted towards Organic Molecular Materials. Hence, most of my publications over the last forty years have been on discotic liquid crystals (synthesis, conductivity, alignment and lyotropic behaviour), on model biomembranes (electrode-bound and patterned lipid bilayers and lipid-monolayer stabilised bubbles) and on high spin polymers (mostly non-Kekulé amminium radical cation derivatives). In the late 1980s I was one of those responsible for setting up the SOMS (Self-Organising Molecular Systems) Centre of which I eventually became the Director. I am now semi-retired and based mainly in Physics. I work half time and my research is centred on lipid-stabilised microbubbles as theranostic agents (agents for imaging and treating cancer, http://microbubbles.leeds.ac.uk/) within the Leeds microbubble group and on high-spin polymers.

Qualifications

• B.Sc.
• A.R.C.S.
• D.Phil.

Research groups and institutes

• Crystallisation and Directed Assembly