Martin Schröder (chemist): Difference between revisions

Martin Schröder FRSE FRSC MAE is a Professor of Chemistry^[1][2] who served as Vice President and Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Manchester from 2015 to 2025.^[4] He also served as Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science from 2011 to 2015 and Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Nottingham from 1995 to 2015.^[5]

Martin Schröder was born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire of Estonian refugee parents in 1954,^[6] and was educated at Montem Primary School and Slough Grammar School. He is first in family to attend university, and was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Sheffield in 1975 and a PhD from Imperial College London in 1978 where his research on oxo complexes of osmium and ruthenium was supervised by William P. Griffith.^[3]

After postdoctoral fellowships at the ETH, Zürich with Albert Eschenmoser,^{[citation needed]} funded by a Royal Society-Swiss National Foundation Fellowship,^{[citation needed]} and at the University of Cambridge with Jack Lewis,^{[citation needed]} he was appointed to a senior demonstratorship at the University of Edinburgh in 1982.^{[citation needed]} He was subsequently^[when?] promoted to lecturer, reader and then professor, and in 1995 was appointed to the University of Nottingham as head and professor of inorganic chemistry. He served as head of the School of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham from 1999 to 2005,^[7] and as executive dean of the Faculty of Science (2011–2015).^{[citation needed]} In 2015 he moved to his current position as vice-president and dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering and professor of chemistry at the University of Manchester.

Schröder has been a visiting professor at the University of Toronto, Canada,^{[citation needed]} the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand^{[citation needed]} and the Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France,^{[citation needed]} and has published over 540 publications and patents.^{[citation needed]}
His early independent research focussed on the chemistry of transition metal thioether and aza macrocyclic complexes with particular focus on the stabilisation of unusual oxidation state species.^{[citation needed]} This work led to the isolation and characterisation of unique mononuclear M(I)/(III) (M = Ni, Pd, Pt) and M(II) (M = Ag, Au, Rh, Ir) complexes.^{[citation needed]} His current^[when?] research focuses on the development of new advanced functional materials, particularly metal-organic framework materials for selective fuel and toxic gas capture, purification and catalysis.^{[citation needed]}

Schröder was succeeded as Dean by Sarah Sharples in 2025.^[8]

In 2021, Schröder sent an email to Christopher Jackson in his capacity as a Vice President of the University of Manchester, linking to a right wing website GB News and disputing the presence of institutional racism at the University of Manchester.^[9][10] Jackson has subsequently left the institution,^[11] and Schröder has declined to apologise.

In 1994 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), and in 2016 he was elected Member of Academia Europaea (MAE). He is currently^[when?] a Member of Council of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).^[12] He has held a Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship,^[when?] and has Honorary Degrees from Tallinn Technical University^{[citation needed]} and from Nikolaev Institute of Inorganic Chemistry,^{[citation needed]} Russian Academy of Sciences.^{[citation needed]} In 2020, he was awarded the Nyholm Prize for Inorganic Chemistry by the Royal Society of Chemistry.^[13]