The North American Catalysis Society (NACS)

Sir Eric Rideal

Sir Eric Rideal who was one of the founders of catalysis in Great Britain
and who was the eponym of the famous Eley Rideal mechanism. Professor E
Rideal was famous for the work of the Colloid Science Laboratory which he
set up in Cambridge University in the 1930s. He was born in 1890 and was
first involved in surface chemistry during the First World War when, with
H.S. Taylor, he worked on catalysts for the Haber process for the production
of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen, and for the selective oxidation of
carbon monoxide in mixtures of CO and hydrogen. Later Taylor and Rideal
wrote a pioneering book Catalysis in Theory and Practice. The Rideal
Conference is so named in his honor; this triennial series of UK research
conferences on surface chemistry and catalysis was initiated by Charles
Kemball and others in the late 1960s.

Contributed by Jacques Vedrine, June 2002

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