Professor Anthony Legon

Research summary

…

The aim of my research is to understand non-covalent interactions of closed-shell molecules. The focus is on factors controlling the properties (especially directionality, interaction strength and electric-charge redistribution) of complexes involving the hydrogen bond B…HX, the halogen bond B…XY and, recently, the ‘coinage-metal’ bond B…MX (B is a simple Lewis base, HX a hydrogen halide, XY a di-halogen and M is Cu or Ag). Precise values of the properties of such complexes in effective isolation are determined by rotational spectroscopy[1-3].

For the hydrogen bond, many series of complexes B…HX have been examined by systematically varying B (for example ...

Read more >

Biography

I was born in Acton, Suffolk in 1941 but returned before the end of World War II to the east end of London, where I was educated, first at the Lawrence School (Bethnal Green) and later at the Coopers’ Company School (Mile End). I read for the BSc (Special) degree in Chemistry at UCL and conducted  doctoral research there with Jim Millen, with whom I subsequently had a long and happy research collaboration. My association with UCL continued as Turner and Newall Fellow (1968-70), Lecturer (1970-83), Reader (1983-4) and Thomas Graham Professor (1989–90) in its Chemistry Department. In 1980, I spent ...

Read more >

Recent publications

• Hill, JG & Legon, AC, 2019, ‘Nonbonding pairs in cyclic thioethers: Electrostatic modeling and ab initio calculations for complexes of 2,5-dihydrothiophene, thietane, and thiirane with hydrogen fluoride’. International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, vol 119.
• Legon, A, Walker, N, Gougoula, E, Medcraft, C & Alkorta, I, 2019, ‘A chalcogen-bonded complex H₃N⋅⋅⋅S=C=S formed by ammonia and carbon disulfide characterised by chirped-pulse, broadband microwave spectroscopy’. Journal of Chemical Physics, vol 150.

Read more >