Polly Arnold facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Polly Arnold
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Arnold in 2018
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Polly Louise Arnold
24 July 1972 |
| Education | Notting Hill and Ealing High School Westminster School |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford (BA) University of Sussex (DPhil) |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Chemistry |
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| Thesis | Low valent and low co-ordinate complexes of transition metals and lanthanides (1997) |
| Doctoral advisor | Geoffrey Cloke |
Polly Louise Arnold, born on July 24, 1972, is a brilliant British chemist. She is currently the director of the chemical sciences team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She also works as a chemistry professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Before this, she was a professor at the University of Edinburgh from 2007 to 2019.
Polly Arnold's Education Journey
Polly Arnold went to school at Notting Hill and Ealing High School and Westminster School. She then studied chemistry at Brasenose College, Oxford. For her advanced studies, she moved to the University of Sussex. There, she earned her Doctor of Philosophy degree, which is a very high academic qualification.
Discoveries in Chemistry
Polly Arnold's research focuses on creating new chemical compounds. She works with special elements like early transition metals, lanthanides, and actinides. These elements are found at the bottom of the periodic table. Her work helps us understand how these elements behave. This knowledge is important for discovering new catalysts. It also helps us understand how to manage nuclear waste safely.
After her studies, Polly Arnold was a Fulbright Program fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She then returned to the UK in 1999. Her main goal is to design and create very reactive f-block compounds. These compounds can activate small, unreactive molecules. Examples include carbon oxides, dinitrogen, and hydrocarbons. Her work provides basic information about how these elements are structured and bonded.
Polly Arnold travels the world to give lectures about her work. She also advises governments and companies. You can often see her on TV and social media. She talks about how important it is to have many different kinds of people working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
Awards and Special Honours
Polly Arnold has received many important awards for her work.
In 2012, she won the Rosalind Franklin Award. This award recognized her scientific achievements. It also highlighted her role as a great example for others. She used the award money to create a film called A Chemical Imbalance. She was the executive producer for this documentary.
In the same year, she also received the Corday-Morgan Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry. This was for her amazing work with uranium chemistry. She was also chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE).
In 2015, she received an Suffrage Science award.
She was honored as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2017. This was for her contributions to chemistry and for supporting women in STEM.
In 2018, she won the Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson award from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). This was for her work on transuranic organometallic chemistry. She is the only woman to have won this award since it started in 1999. Also in 2018, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). This is a very high honor for scientists who have made big contributions to natural knowledge.
