Background
Norrish was born in Cambridge and was educated at The Perse School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
Norrish was born in Cambridge and was educated at The Perse School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
Emmanuel College.
He was a former student of Eric Rideal. Norrish was a prisoner in World War I and later commented, with sadness, that many of his contemporaries and potential competitors at Cambridge had not survived the War. Norrish rejoined Emmanuel College as a Research Fellow in 1925 and later became the Head of the Physical Chemistry Department at the University of Cambridge, occupying part of the Lensfield Road Building with the separate department "Chemistry" (which encompassed organic, theoretical and inorganic chemistry).
Both departments had separate administrative, technical and academic personnel until they merged to form one chemistry department under John Meurig Thomas in the early 1980s.
Norrish researched photochemistry using continuous light sources (including after the war, searchlights). Norrish was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (Federal Reserve System) in 1936.
Norrish was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (Federal Reserve System) in 1936. As a result of the development of flash photolysis, Norrish was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1967 along with Manfred Eigen and George Porter for their study of extremely fast chemical reactions. One of his accomplishments is the development of the Norrish reaction. At Cambridge, Norrish supervised Rosalind Franklin, future deoxyribonucleic acid researcher and colleague of James Watson and Francis Crick, and experienced some conflict with her.
Royal Society.
