Professor Anthony Legon

Research summary

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 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 ...

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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 ...

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Recent publications

• Riaz, S, Stephens, S, Mizukami, W, Tew, DP, Walker, NR & Legon, AC 2012, ‘H2S center dot center dot center dot Ag-I synthesized by a laser-ablation method and identified by its rotational spectrum’. Chemical Physics Letters.
• Stephens, S, Mizukami, W, Tew, DP, Walker, NR & Legon, AC 2012, ‘Molecular geometry of OC center dot center dot center dot AgI determined by broadband rotational spectroscopy and ab initio calculations’. Journal of Chemical Physics.

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