“Luck kick‐started my career”

David Leigh erhält die August-Wilhelm-von-Hofmann-Denkmünze für seine Leistungen zu molekularen Maschinen und molekularer Topologie. Er stellt mechanisch verzahnte Systeme her, Catenane, Rotaxaneund molekulare Knoten, die die supramolekulare Che-mie in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten geprägt haben. Dotiert ist der Preis mit einer Goldmedaille; er wird alle zwei Jahre vergeben.

My biggest privilege as a scientist is that Society considers it’s worth spending public funds on the search for ever-deeper truths about the way things are.

The biggest surprise of my career as a researcher was the serendipitous discovery of a catenane when trying to form a macrocycle designed to bind to CO₂.¹⁾ That piece of pure luck kick-started my independent academic career. There’s been a lot more luck along the way, especially in terms of the young researchers who’ve chosen to pass through my lab.

I studied chemistry because I had a terrific High School teacher, Dave Clarke. He captured my imagination and made chemistry exciting and fun.

Which is the secret of your biggest success as a researcher? Empowering young people and trying to give them what they need to do something great – environment, challenges, inspiration, support.

A talent I’d like to have is better time management.

This is the ideal morning for me: Discovering that email is down globally.

The best advice I ever got is: In my 2012 Angewandte Chemie Profile I answered a similar question: ‘Don’t eat yellow snow.’ That’s still a wise policy, but more valuable generally is President Obama’s advice to young folk: ‘Learn how to get stuff done.’

If I could be another person for one day, I would be happy trying to be the best me.

My best ideas arise while I’m mulling over something unexpected, just before I fall asleep.

In a spare hour I get stuff done.

If I could spend a day with the person behind my prize‘s eponym I’d ask him if he thinks we’ll ever learn the lessons of history. In 1845 Hofmann became the first Director of the Royal College of Chemistry, which is now part of Imperial College London. This superstar immigrant to Britain, a pioneer of synthetic organic chemistry, returned to Germany in 1865 after the British government lost interest in science and technology and Britain fell behind the rest of Europe.

David Leigh, Jahrgang 1963, ist seit 2012 Professor für organische Chemie in Manchester und hat seit 2016 die Royal-Society-Research-Professur inne. Seit dem Jahr 2017 ist er Guinness-Rekordhalter für den kleinsten Knoten. Promoviert hat er im Jahr 1987 in Sheffield. Bild: Anne Purkiss

• ¹ Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 1995, 34, 1209–1212

Ausgeblättert