Leroy "Lee" Cronin

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...

FRSC (born 1 June 1973) is the Regius Chair of Chemistry in the School of Chemistry at the

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

. He was elected to the Fellowship of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...

, the

Royal Society of Chemistry The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is a learned society and professional association in the United Kingdom with the goal of "advancing the chemistry, chemical sciences". It was formed in 1980 from the amalgamation of the Chemical Society, the ...

, and appointed to the Regius Chair of Chemistry in 2013. He was previously the Gardiner Chair, appointed April 2009.

Biography

Cronin was awarded BSc (1994) and PhD (1997) from the

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public Collegiate university, collegiate research university in York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thir ...

. From 1997 to 1999, he was a

Leverhulme The Leverhulme Trust () is a large national grant-making organisation in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1925 under the will of the 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), with the instruction that its resources should be used to cover ...

fellow at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

working with Neil Robertson. From 1999-2000 he worked as an

Alexander von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, natural history, naturalist, List of explorers, explorer, and proponent of Romanticism, Romantic philosophy and Romanticism ...

research fellow in the laboratory of Achim Mueller at the

University of Bielefeld Bielefeld University () is a public university in Bielefeld, Germany. Founded in 1969, it is one of the country's newer universities, and considers itself a "reform" university, following a different style of organization and teaching than the e ...

(1999–2000). In 2000, he joined the

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

as a Lecturer in Chemistry, and in 2002 he moved to a similar position at the University of Glasgow. In 2005, he was promoted to Reader at the

, EPSRC Advanced Fellow followed by promotion to Professor of Chemistry in 2006, and in 2009 became the Gardiner Professor. In 2013, he became the

Regius Professor of Chemistry (Glasgow) The Regius Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow was founded in 1817 by King George III, who also established the Regius Chairs of Surgery and Natural History at the university. The chair originated from a lectureship in chemistry, esta ...

. In 2012 Cronin was described to be designing robots using 3D printed-architectures to discover and design new chemicals including pharmaceuticals. By making a modular system he was able to build a programming language for chemistry named XDL. This was extended to ensure the " chemputer" was universal and this was demonstrated by reading the chemistry synthesis literature and converting it into executable chemical code. A spinoff company lead by Cronin, called Chemify, was launched in 2019 and raised £33m in 2023. In 2017 Cronin first published the concept of

assembly theory Assembly theory is a framework developed to quantify the complexity of molecules and objects by assessing the minimal number of steps required to assemble them from fundamental building blocks. Proposed by chemist Lee Cronin and his team, the ...

which aims to quantify how complex a molecule is, considering how many steps it would take to build the molecule using the minimum number of steps to add together the various parts allowing reuse. In 2022 Cronin was suspended by the Royal Society of Chemistry for three months for breaching their code of conduct, following an investigation of a complaint made by a third party.

Awards and recognition

* 2007

Philip Leverhulme Prize The Philip Leverhulme Prize is awarded by the Leverhulme Trust to recognise the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising. The prize sche ...

by the Leverhulme Trust * 2012 Royal Society of Chemistry Corday–Morgan medal * 2014 recognised as one of the UK's top 10 Inspiring Scientists and Engineers (RISE) as well as being recognised as one of the top 100 UK practising Scientists by the UK Science Council. * 2015 Royal Society of Edinburgh BP / Hutton Prize for Energy innovation. Royal Society of Chemistry

Tilden Prize The Tilden Prize is an award that is made by the Royal Society of Chemistry for advances in chemistry. The award was established in 1939 and commemorates Sir William A. Tilden, a prominent British chemist. The prize runs annually with up to thre ...

. * 2018 American Chemical Society Inorganic Chemistry Lectureship

Interdisciplinary Prize for his work developing the field of digital chemistry

References

External links

The Cronin Group

Cronin biography
* ** (2011) ** (2012) {{DEFAULTSORT:Cronin, Leroy Scottish chemists Academics of the University of Glasgow Living people Alumni of the University of York 1973 births Academics of the University of Birmingham Researchers of artificial life Regius Professors Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows of the Royal Society of Chemistry 21st-century British chemists Philip Leverhulme Prize winners