Flashback

There are now 50 research students, postdoctoral fellows and assistants in the chemistry department at Exeter University. Current major research areas include peptides, heterocyclic compounds and steroids, reaction mechanisms and boron chemistry. During the past few years the laboratories in the Washington Singer building have become intolerably overcrowded, and we now have a new building designed by Sir Basil Spence which will provide an opportunity for future development. 

Digested version of a feature by H N Rydon, professor of chemistry at the University of Exeter (November 1966, p498).

Ed: Exeter’s chemistry department closed on 1 August 2005, when a new School of Biosciences was created (see  Chemistry World, January 2005, p9).

20 years ago in Chemistry in Britain

Before 1939, British Schering was a familiar name in the UK pharmaceutical industry, but wartime confiscation of German assets put paid to that. It was not until earlier this year that the West German parent company Schering AG was able to buy back the rights to the Schering name from Aspro-Nicholas. Schering’s operations in the UK have been reorganised and the old name reintroduced throughout.  

Digested version of  Schering - What’s in a name (November 1986, p983).

Ed: Schering has been taken over by German firm Bayer (Chemistry World, July 2006, p12), following a hostile bid from Merck. The Schering name will remain in Bayer Schering Pharma AB, and in the US pharmaceutical giant Schering-Plough, set up as a US subsidiary of Schering AG in the late 1800s.