Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, 9 November 1897 - 7 June 1978

Ronald George Wreyford Norrish was born in Cambridge on 9 November 1897 and died in Addenbrooke’s Hospital there on 7 June 1978. He was educated at the Perse School and then at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and apart from his service in World War spent his entire life in Cambridge. For nearly 30 years he was Professor of Physical Chemistry in the University. He was one of the pioneers of photochemistry and also carried out much research on chain reactions and polymer chemistry. For his work in developing flash photolysis as a means of studying rapid chemical reactions he shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in his seventieth year.