Sen Hon Prof Fellow: David Rankin

David Rankin has been made a Senior Honorary Professorial Fellow.

He came to Edinburgh in 1969, after studying for both his first degree (Natural Sciences: Chemistry) and PhD at the University of Cambridge.

He was appointed to a teaching post in 1971, and then climbed the ladder, to a Personal Chair in Structural Chemistry, in 1989.

He was Head of Chemistry for three years from 1990.

Professor Rankin’s research started in synthetic inorganic chemistry, first with germanium, then fluorophosphorus compounds.

The need to find out the structures of the new molecules led to his lifelong interest in structural chemistry.

As Edinburgh grew to become a world centre for electron diffraction, and as computing capability advanced, Professor Rankin enjoyed developing new methods combining theory and experiment.