Remembering the Duke of Edinburgh
Ahead of the funeral service for HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, we've taken a look through our archives for his visits over the years – with our patron, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and on his own.
We were honoured to welcome Prince Philip as the first Honorary Fellow of one of our founding societies, the Royal Institute of Chemistry, in 1952.
As covered at the time in our member magazine Chemistry in Britain, on 17 February 1969, Prince Philip and the Queen made their first visit to the Chemical Society to attend a reception celebrating the Society's recent move into the section of Burlington House in which our London team is still based.
Among the photographs taken of the visit was the one below, showing (from left to right), the Duke of Edinburgh, Professor Colin Eaborn (Honorary Secretary of the Chemical Society), the Queen and Professor Sir Ronald Nyholm (Chemical Society President).
In 1989, on 15 June, the Duke of Edinburgh visited Thomas Graham House to officially open our new premises in Cambridge.
The president of the Royal Society of Chemistry at the time was Professor John Ward (pictured, right) who conducted the tour and introduced Prince Philip to many of our staff and honorary officers.
The last visit was on 10 June 1991 when the Queen and Prince Philip visited Burlington House to mark the Royal Society of Chemistry’s 150th anniversary; the event was hosted by president Sir Rex Richards.
Coincidentally, the reception fell on the same day as the Duke’s 70th birthday so at the end of the visit when the tour reached the reception in the Library they entered to the tune of ‘Happy Birthday’.
As part of the reception (pictured below, left), exhibitions on the protection of the environment and crime detection were curated at the request of the Queen.
The photograph below, right shows the Duke outside the Burlington House Library, signing a portrait of himself and the Queen using a special silver desk set; we keep the desk set and portrait in the archive to put on display for special events such as Open House.
