Alberto Romão Dias (1941 – 15 July 2007) was a full professor of the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) of the Technical University of Lisbon in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

Education

His alma mater includes graduating from industrial-chemical engineering at the Instituto Superior Técnico in 1964, a Ph.D. in chemistry from

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

in 1970, and Aggregation at the Instituto Superior Técnico in 1979.

Research works

His research interests were in the area of

inorganic chemistry Inorganic chemistry deals with synthesis and behavior of inorganic and organometallic compounds. This field covers chemical compounds that are not carbon-based, which are the subjects of organic chemistry. The distinction between the two disci ...

, particularly chemistry of coordination compounds and the

organometallic Organometallic chemistry is the study of organometallic compounds, chemical compounds containing at least one chemical bond between a carbon atom of an organic molecule and a metal, including alkali, alkaline earth, and transition metals, and so ...

chemistry of

transition metal In chemistry, a transition metal (or transition element) is a chemical element in the d-block of the periodic table (groups 3 to 12), though the elements of group 12 (and less often group 3) are sometimes excluded. They are the elements that can ...

s. The latter work has been on mono and polynuclear complex containing the fragment M( η⁵-C₅H₅)₂. Other topics in which he was interested include the synthesis of complexes with ligands containing phosphorus, reactions of metal vapours with different substrates aiming at the synthesis of new compounds, and the preparation of species with catalytic polymerization of

olefins In organic chemistry, an alkene is a hydrocarbon containing a carbon–carbon double bond. Alkene is often used as synonym of olefin, that is, any hydrocarbon containing one or more double bonds.H. Stephen Stoker (2015): General, Organic, an ...

using transition metal complexes. Recent research in this group includes the synthesis of new

compounds (some of them with nonlinear optical properties), their characterisation (including the X-ray determination of the molecular structure), the study of their reactivity and of their

redox Redox (reduction–oxidation, , ) is a type of chemical reaction in which the oxidation states of substrate (chemistry), substrate change. Oxidation is the loss of Electron, electrons or an increase in the oxidation state, while reduction ...

behaviour, the determination of the metal-ligand bond energies from data obtained by

calorimetry In chemistry and thermodynamics, calorimetry () is the science or act of measuring changes in ''state variables'' of a body for the purpose of deriving the heat transfer associated with changes of its state due, for example, to chemical reacti ...

and the study of chemical bond using molecular orbital theory. Dias published the book ''Ligação Química'' (English: ''Chemical Bond'') in October 2006. This text is used mainly as a study guide for "Chemistry I" students at the Instituto Superior Técnico. Alberto Romão Dias died on July 15, 2007.

External links

VIII Governo ConstitucionalAlberto Romão Dias at IST
1941 births 2007 deaths Alumni of the University of Oxford Instituto Superior Técnico alumni 20th-century Portuguese people Portuguese chemists Portuguese chemical engineers {{Portugal-scientist-stub