Athelstan Laurence Johnson Beckwith 1930-2010

Abstract

Athel Beckwith was an organic chemist whose research was concerned with free radicals, the reactive intermediates that play important roles in many organic chemical reactions. After studies and junior appointments at Australian universities, at Oxford University he worked with W. A. Waters and completed his doctorate at a time when scepticism about the very existence of free radicals was being rolled back by a small group of experimentalists. Returning to Australia, where he occupied chairs at the University of Adelaide and the Australian National University, Beckwith used studies of organic structure and mechanisms, revealed by kinetic methods and electron spin resonance spectroscopy, to be..