Richard Compton, University of Oxford

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Abstract

The Analyst profiles Richard Compton, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and the first and only recipient of both the RSC Medals in Electrochemistry and in Electroanalytical Chemistry.

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Biography

Richard Compton was born on the 10th March 1955 in Scunthorpe, on the East coast of England. He completed his undergraduate degree at Oxford University in 1976. He studied for a Doctorate in Electrochemistry under the supervision of Professor W. John Albery, first at Oxford for one year and then at Imperial College, London for two years after Albery was elected to the Chair of Physical Chemistry at the latter. Richard returned to Oxford for a further two years as a research fellow, before taking a position as a Lecturer in Physical Chemistry at Liverpool University in 1981. In 1985 he went back to Oxford, where he remains to this day. Richard has held the title of Professor of Chemistry at Oxford since 1996.

Richard's research has been acknowledged by the scientific community during his impressive career. In 1994 he received the RSC Medal in Electrochemistry, and in 1998 he was both awarded the Research Medal of the Worshipful Company of Dyers and received an Honorary Doctorate from the Estonian Agricultural University, Tartu, Estonia. In 1999 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and was awarded the RSC Medal in Electroanalytical Chemistry, making him the first and only recipient of both RSC medals in the area of electrochemistry/analysis. In 2004 he was Elected lifelong Honorary Professor, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China and given the Alexandro Volta Medal of the European Section of The Electrochemical Society. This year he is the Tilden Lecturer in Physical Chemistry of the RSC and in September will be presented with the Breyer Medal of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute.

Which research paper from the last two years are you most proud of, and why?

The last two years have been bumper years—the best ever for quantity. My group published 72 papers in 2004 and 77 in 2005. The best cited are a review article written with graduate students Marisa Buzzeo and Russell Evans concerned with electrochemistry in room temperature ionic liquids¹ and a paper in Analytical Chemistry² with Craig Banks (then a final year graduate student) and Ryan Moore (an undergraduate project student) showing that carbon nanotubes are in many cases no more electrocatalytic than the much vaunted multiwalled carbon nanotubes. Both of these already have more than 45 cites, as I write in mid-2006, so professionally speaking I guess I am most proud of these.

Scientifically however, I am most proud of a paper with Trevor Davies³ in which we show you can use simple cyclic voltammetry to measure the size of particles on the surface of an electrode. At first sight it seems that this is a simply geometrical blocking problem but since material can diffuse ‘round’ the block it actually represents a very challenging theoretical problem, especially since the particles will be randomly distributed over the electrode surface and might be of any size. The match between experiment and theory was beautiful and really convinced me for the first time that we really understood the randomness problem and were tackling it correctly. The implications of this have had wide significance, not least in the rigorous characterisation of microelectrode arrays.⁴ Indeed this nicely illustrates a philosophy of the group; fully understand the physical chemistry of a problem and then exploit the insight for real world analytical measurements.

You recently wrote a Highlight article for The Analyst on new electrodes for old: from carbon nanotubes to edge plane pyrolytic graphite.⁵ Where do you see this work developing in the future?

The immediate outcome of this work is the realisation that edge plane pyrolytic graphite is an ideal electrode for many electrode reactions of analytical interest, as for example we have showed for the oxidation of NADH.⁶ The protein electrochemists have known this for two decades without quite fully realising why. Now that the difference between edge and basal plane zones of graphitic surfaces are much better appreciated there is and will increasingly be a significant trend for electroanalytical chemists to explore this material.

More generally the electroanalytical community en masse needs to realise that a little caution is required before jumping on bandwagons of the carbon nanotube type. It has been truly alarming seeing the sheer number of papers reporting naïve experiments in which nanotubes are scattered over an electrode which then assumes apparently magical electrocatalytic qualities in respect of some desired target molecule without the obvious control experiments ever being done. The work of Dr Craig Banks in my group has shown that in all the cases we have looked at, the catalysis either is no greater than seen at edge plane graphite or else results from metal oxide or metal nanoparticles trapped in the tubes as a result of the growth using CVD on substrates which are the source of the nanoparticles.⁷

Nanoparticles of course are now highly interesting in their own right, for example as electrode surface modifiers and for contrasts in their chemical behaviour from the corresponding bulk material. Ultimately this will lead to ‘designer’ interfaces chemically synthesised for specific analytical tasks. Hitherto modified electrodes have been considered mostly from a purely ‘chemical’ point of view—the real attractions lie in simultaneously controlling the physical aspects, most notably diffusive transport.

If you could make only one revolutionary scientific breakthrough in the future, what would you most like it to be, and why?

I'll settle for any revolutionary breakthrough provided we securely patent it before telling the world!

What do you enjoy most about your career?

Travelling and lecturing is very enjoyable. So is running a reasonably large research group (typically around 20) of young active scientists and seeing their work blossom as they develop.

You frequently travel all over the world to meet with, and form collaborations with, other Chemists. Where is the most interesting place you've been, and why?

This is the hardest question of the lot! One of the major pleasures of academic life is building up a planet wide group of friends whose generous hospitality invariably offers so much more than could ever be experienced by visiting as a mere tourist especially in respect of meeting people, learning their views and appreciating their lives. Variously, I've watched soccer at the home stadium of Boca Juniors (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Barcelona (Spain), FC Porto (Portugal) and Kharkov Metalists (Ukraine), met the president of Estonia, Arnold Ruutel, and invited him to dinner and to lecture in Oxford, eaten sparrow kebabs in Kyoto (Japan), horse steaks in Greifswald (Germany), caviar in Dnipropetrovsk (Ukraine) and been forced to walk the most nearly vertical sections of the (heavily reconstructed) Great Wall of China.

Sao Paulo (Brazil), Chengdu (China) and Tallinn (Estonia) are probably my favourite destinations at the moment, but I have great hopes of Tomsk (Siberia) where I lecture in September. However the question specifies ‘most interesting’ rather than the best food, the nicest people, the strangest customs, so I would have to say that visiting Belarus (capital city Minsk) has been the most interesting. We are working on developing a collaboration with the group of Genady Ragoisha who are doing world-leading work on the study of electrochemical interfaces which are changing with time using impedance methods coupled with sophisticated at point of measurement data analysis despite working with resources which are relatively modest by international standards. So part of the interest is scientific. Also Belarus is depicted in the UK and USA press as one of the last ‘Stalinist countries’ suffering terribly from an oppressive ‘old style’ communist regime. On closer inspection these articles are typically filed from Kiev, a few hundred miles away from Minsk and in a totally different country (Ukraine). The reality is in stark contrast to what we are told by our British newspapers: Minsk is a delightful and happy city and President Lukashenko a charismatic and popular leader who does cameo appearances for the national ice hockey team! We should never take what we read at face value (unless published in a ferociously refereed journal like The Analyst)!

As a significant role model and active teacher to young aspiring electrochemists, what advice can you give on the secrets of a successful research career?

The first and absolutely essential point is that you should only get involved in research (electrochemical or otherwise) if you really, really enjoy it as a pleasure in its own right. I have encountered researchers at every level (even post-doctoral) following scientific careers simply because they think this will give them a higher quality of life (‘better pay’ ) than other options and is a relatively ‘easy’ route. This is often ultimately professionally disastrous, and not just because we scientists are actually not particularly well paid (in the UK at least). Successful and contented scientists are those who live (almost) every minute for it, who are found in the lab at weekends, and who have read and are discussing the latest paper posted on The Analyst's ‘Advance Articles’ website (and the equivalent sites for all the other journals).

Taking enthusiasm and hard work as given (but these go a long, long way) then I would encourage aspiring electrochemists to ensure they are completely aware of the literature—so read a lot and make sure you are up to date with all the papers being published in and around your area. This adds to the excitement of doing research as well as obviously enhancing your own work. When I referee any paper I always set myself the task of trying to find at least one piece of information or one idea which will benefit the work in my own group. When I started research one had to visit the library on a frequent and regular basis to trawl through hard copies of all the journals to keep up to date. Literature searches meant long and tedious manual searches of Chemical Abstracts. Today you sit at the computer and access, in minutes, huge amounts of information limited only by your ability to ask the search engine the right questions. So if you are smart there is no reason at all not to be fluent with the literature, assuming you are privileged to work in a location with appropriate access. As editor of the journal Electrochemistry Communications I am increasingly harsh on those authors who fail to cite relevant papers.

Another piece of advice is to ‘network’ efficiently. When you are privileged to attend a conference take the opportunity to meet new people and to talk to them about their work and your own. If a lecture or poster interests you be sure to speak with the author, but in any case practise your networking skills by feigning interest in those that don't!

Electrochemists are also typically exceptionally ‘social’ animals and it is probably unwise for a committed teetotaller to choose to work in the area. But there is serious aspect to my point—often in your career you will be required to interact professionally outside of the workplace. I have been invited to wonderful banquets and feasts, especially in the Former Soviet Union and in China. There it is expected you will join in and enjoy a drink. There is a professional obligation to this as well as being hugely enjoyable! In the case of Russia you will have to be able to propose and respond to numerous toasts in an eloquent and witty style, with each toast accompanied by a giant down-in-one shot of vodka or Georgian cognac. Occasionally the vodka will be the famous ‘Russky Standard’ made to the recipe developed by the chemist Dimitri Mendeleev in St Petersburg in the late nineteenth century on the orders of the then Tsar of Russia: Others will know Mendeleev as the inventor of the modern Periodic Table. On socialising in China, I recall one memorable occasion in Sichuan (home of the wonderful ‘hotpot cooking’—be sure to try the bullfrog cooked in this style and eaten whole, at least by the locals) where there were about twelve of us sat around a circular banqueting table and each of my hosts toasted me in rotation requiring me to respond and then down a beer with the proposer of the toast. This meant I was drinking beer roughly twelve times faster than my collective hosts—even so some of them were collapsing before we had finished the long evening, partly reflecting our different liver chemistries and partly the long term preparative training I had put in over the years: another piece of implicit advice.

Last and most importantly publish lots. And then publish more. Avoid at all costs potential supervisors or collaborators who are not published and cited, however good they are at smooth talking or whatever level of funding they are going to have. It amazes and appals me how many scientists do interesting work yet are shy (or nervous) about going into print. If you don't publish you simply don't exist in our game.

What is your most important personal goal for the future?

The intellectual challenge of electrochemistry continues to fascinate and captivate, and, to be honest, with an ever increasing intensity as one's knowledge of, and insight into the area grows. So it is very important to me to maintain cutting edge research activity in both fundamental and applied electrochemistry. Whether that will be in Oxford or elsewhere remains to be seen.

References

1. M. C. Buzzeo, R. G. Evans and R. G. Compton, ChemPhysChem, 2004, 5(8), 1106–1120.
2. R. R. Moore, C. E. Banks and R. G. Compton, Anal. Chem., 2004, 76, 2677.
3. T. J. Davies, E. R. Lowe, S. J. Wilkins and R. G. Compton, ChemPhysChem, 2005, 6(7), 1340–1347.
4. O. Ordeig, C. E. Banks, T. J. Davies, J. del Campo, R. Mas, F. Xavier Muñoz and R. G. Compton, Analyst, 2006, 131, 440.
5. C. E. Banks and R. G. Compton, Analyst, 2006, 131, 15.
6. C. E. Banks and R. G. Compton, Analyst, 2005, 130, 1232.
7. C. E. Banks, A. Crossley, C. Salter, S. J. Wilkins and R. G. Compton, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., 2006, 45(16), 2533–2537.

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Footnote

† Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Extended biography. See DOI: 10.1039/b606676n

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