Andrea Sella
Professor Andrea Sella is on a mission to get us to understand chemistry and the often hidden impact it has on our lives.
He does this by telling chemical stories illustrated with demonstrations, and by contributing to a wide range of TV and radio programmes. By birth Italian, he was educated in the US, Kenya, Canada (where he studied with Robert H Morris) and the UK where he did his PhD in organometallic chemistry with Malcolm L H Green. He is professor of inorganic chemistry at University College London, working primarily on materials synthesis and increasingly, Citizen Science. He is heavily involved in developing new teaching strategies and in reducing the environmental impact both of his own Department and UCL as a whole. He is seldom seen without a pushbike, doesn’t drive, and seldom flies.
- Opinion
Marsh’s wires and the birth of the toaster
Raise a toast to the man who invented an essential alloy
- Opinion
Nichols’ radiometer and discovering that radiation exerts pressure
A sensitive reflection of light pressure
- Opinion
Linnemann’s baskets and distillation in the early days of understanding equilibrium
A distillation method that came out in the wash