Philip Mountford

Photo of Philip Mountford

Professor Philip Mountford

Emeritus Professor of Organometallic Chemistry and Catalysis

 

 

Research Interests

Philip Mountford’s research interests are broadly centred around the synthesis, structure, bonding and stoichiometric and catalytic reactivity of organometallic compounds of the early transition and lanthanide metals, and the alkaline earth metals. This research has a particular emphasis on compounds with metal-nitrogen multiple bonds (and other unusual metal-element bonds), homogeneous olefin polymerisation and ring-opening polymerisation).

Biography

Philip Mountford has the title of Professor of Organometallic Chemistry and Catalysis at the University of Oxford, and is formerly a Tutorial Fellow in Inorganic Chemistry at St Edmund Hall. He gained his D.Phil degree at Oxford and Balliol College under the supervision of Professor MLH Green (1990). He remained in Oxford as a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, and in 1992 moved directly to his first independent faculty position at the University of Nottingham. In 1998 he returned to Oxford and St Edmund Hall. He is an author of ca. 270 articles and patents (H index 56) and has supervised 50 PhD students and numerous postdoctoral researchers and undergraduate Masters students. He was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in 1998 and has received several national and international awards and guest professorships. In particular he received the RSC Organometallic Chemistry (Frankland) Award for 2012-2013 and is also a former recipient of the RSC's Sir Edward Frankland Fellowship (1998-1999) for organometallic chemistry. He has held Visiting Professorships at the Universite Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, the University of Bordeaux, the University of Tübingen and the University of Heidelberg. He has contributed to the general academic community within the University sector and the RSC. From 2008 to 2016 was successively Executive Deputy/Acting Head and then Head of Inorganic Chemistry at Oxford. From 2012 to 2015 he was Chairman of the Editorial Board of Dalton Transactions and Chairman of the Editorial Board of Specialist Periodical Reports from 2016 to 2018. He also served on the Dalton Division Council of the Royal Society of Chemistry from 2012 to 2015. He retired from the department in the summer of 2023 but continued to teach as a Lecturer at St Edmund Hall where he was also elected as an Emeritus Fellow.

 

Publications