Andrea Sella
Professor Andrea Sella is on a mission to get us to understand chemistry and the often hidden impact it has on our lives.
He does this by telling chemical stories illustrated with demonstrations, and by contributing to a wide range of TV and radio programmes. By birth Italian, he was educated in the US, Kenya, Canada (where he studied with Robert H Morris) and the UK where he did his PhD in organometallic chemistry with Malcolm L H Green. He is professor of inorganic chemistry at University College London, working primarily on materials synthesis and increasingly, Citizen Science. He is heavily involved in developing new teaching strategies and in reducing the environmental impact both of his own Department and UCL as a whole. He is seldom seen without a pushbike, doesn’t drive, and seldom flies.
OpinionOtto’s ozoniser and the value of nurturing inventors
Marius-Paul Otto (1870–1939) patently used his entrepreneurial spirit to clean up
OpinionCoblentz’s infrared spectrometer and the overlooked power of vibrations
Vibrational spectroscopy’s intuitive insight into molecular structure was initially shunned by chemists
OpinionFaraday’s laboratory manual and the isolation of benzene
Instruction on how to be as much at home in the lab as was the man himself
OpinionWhy I returned the Faraday prize to the Royal Society
Andrea Sella explains how inaction over Elon Musk’s membership motivated him to act
OpinionWay’s electric light and flashes of brilliance
The continuing adventures of John Thomas Way under the mercury-powered spotlight
OpinionWay’s double silicates and what else he dug up from the soil
John Thomas Way’s practical advice also produced the first quantitative observations of ion exchange
OpinionPaneth’s mirrors and the isolation of methyl radicals
Laying the groundwork for the study of combustion and photochemical reactions
OpinionUlam’s Monte Carlo method and the harnessing of randomness
Randomness in the service of confidence
OpinionVogel’s textbooks and their international impact on teaching
A shared reference that we risk losing in a digital age
OpinionWood’s metal and the evolution of fusible alloys
Invented by American dentist Barnabas Wood (1819–1875), whose life is shrouded in mystery
OpinionSydney Young and his evaporative fractionator
Developments in distillation find us in good spirits
OpinionLangley’s bolometer and the importance of ‘stamp collecting’
Mapping a spectrum of developments
OpinionFermi’s questions and the importance of estimation
Knowing how to approximate the unknown is a much undervalued skill
OpinionHenninger and Le Bel’s fractionator and the importance of lab culture
An undercurrent of collaboration
OpinionCelebrating 200 editions of Classic Kit
Andrea Sella shares his favourite experiences from delving into the history of lab equipment
OpinionHarmoinen’s inverter drives and a crucial step towards reducing energy consumption
For the 200th Classic Kit, Andrea Sella celebrates a crucial efficiency improvement for motors
OpinionClevenger’s separator and the acceptance of grief
Numerous tragedies beset the life of Joseph Franklin Clevenger (1874–1945)