George Roger Clemo FRS (2 August 1889 – 2 March 1983) was a British

organic chemist Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain carbon atoms.Clayden, J.; ...

. He was born in

Slapton, Devon Slapton is a village and civil parish in the South Hams district of Devon, England. It is located near the A379 road between Kingsbridge and Dartmouth, and lies within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). The nearby be ...

, the eldest son of farmer George and Blanche Ellen (née Hyne) Clemo. He attended Kingsbridge Grammar School and went on to study science at the Royal Albert Memorial College Exeter, a forerunner of Exeter University, gaining a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

in 1910. He then commenced training to be a teacher and in 1911 was appointed deputy master at Penzance County School. In 1916, as part of the war effort, he joined the laboratory of William Henry Perkin, Jr. to work on dyestuffs. In 1922 he entered

Queen's College, Oxford The Queen's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford, England. The college was founded in 1341 by Robert de Eglesfield in honour of Philippa of Hainault. It is distinguished by its predominantly neoclassical architecture, ...

and gained an Oxford B.Sc. and

DPhil A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

, the latter under the supervision of William Henry Perkin, Jr. In 1925 he accepted the position of Director of Research at the

British Dyestuffs Corporation British Dyestuffs Corporation Ltd was a British company formed in 1919 from the merger of British Dyes Ltd with Levinstein Ltd. The British Government was the company's largest shareholder, and had two directors on the board. Background By 1913, ...

in Manchester. Soon afterwards he became Professor of Organic Chemistry at Armstrong College, later part of University of Newcastle. He retired in 1954. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1937. His candidacy citation read: "''Distinguished as an organic chemist. Author or joint-author of about 45 scientific memoirs published in the Journal of the Chemical Society. These cover a wide range of topics, of which the more significant are new synthetic methods, especially in the quinoline group; strychnine and brucine; the lupin alkaloids; the constitution of santonin; catalytic production of polynuclear compounds; experiments on hexadeuterobenzene. Made outstanding contributions to chemistry of lupinane, encountering for the first time cis and transfused rings in isomeric octahydropyrrocolines. Noteworthy too are his synthetical studies in the decaline group, and on rearrangements in the course of selenium dehydrogenations."'' He was a fearless rugby player, and represented Cornwall twice in 1913. He married Angela Mary Gertrude Evans in 1921; they had three sons and a daughter.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Clemo, G R 1889 births 1983 deaths People from South Hams (district) Cornwall RFU players British organic chemists Alumni of the Queen's College, Oxford Academics of Newcastle University Fellows of the Royal Society