Materials for Industry - Derek Birchall Award

The Materials for Industry - Derek Birchall Award rewards an individual for creativity and excellence in the application of materials chemistry in industry.

Rules and Criteria

• Run biennially
• Open to everyone without restrictions
• Candidates are permitted to nominate themselves
• One page CV for the candidate which should include their date of birth, website URL, summary of education and career, a list of 5 relevant publications, total numbers of publications and patents
• A one page supporting statement addressing the selection criteria
• Nominations open 1 September 2010
• Nominations close 31 January 2011
• Award winner will be chosen by the Materials Chemistry Division and the Industry & Technology Forum Awards Committee
• Award winner receives £2000, a medal and a certificate   

About the award

The RSC Materials for Industry - Derek Birchall Award was established in 2008.  The first winner of this award will be announced in June 2009.

Derek Birchall OBE FRS was an inventor. He applied for his first patent, 'a physical improvement to fire extinguishers', in 1951 when he was only 19 and his last, 'a cold sore remedy', in 1994 shortly before his untimely death at the age of 65 in 1995. There were more than 100 patents in between including; those for powders for extinguishing fires (for example, he invented Monnex); a high strength, highly thermal resistant alumina fibre called Saffil (which won the Queens Award for Technological Achievement in 1978 and was used in the heat resistant tiles on the Space Shuttle); and patents pertaining to many new inorganic materials such as 'smart' cements and ceramics. 

Derek Birchall also believed in fundamental science and published more than 100 papers in leading academic journals. Latterly he helped to found the discipline now known as bioinorganic chemistry and in particular he demonstrated how we could learn from nature to develop both new materials and novel applications for existing materials. In addition to being a polymath one of his great strengths, which is celebrated in this award, was to successfully translate academic research into materials with myriad industrial applications many of which remain widely used to this day.