Anthony Cheetham


Sir Anthony Kevin Cheetham is a British materials scientist. From 2012 to 2017 he was Vice-President and Treasurer of the Royal Society.

Education

Cheetham was educated at Stockport Grammar School and read chemistry at St Catherine's College, Oxford, matriculating in 1965, and graduated with first class honours in 1969. He started his doctorate at Wadham College, Oxford in the same year, with a thesis on 'The Structures of some Non-stoichiometric Compounds'; his doctorate was awarded in 1972.

Career and research

After completing his doctorate, Cheetham became a Junior Research Fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford. In 1974 he became a University Lecturer in Chemical Crystallography, and in 1990 he became Ad Hominem Reader in Inorganic Materials. Cheetham moved to the United States a year later to take up a position as Professor of Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he became the first director of the Materials Research Laboratory. In 2007, Cheetham moved back to the United Kingdom to become Goldsmiths' Professor of Materials Science at University of Cambridge, a position he held until October 2017. He is now a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Department of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge. He also holds a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at the National University of Singapore and a Research Professorship in the MRL at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Cheetham's area of research is inorganic and hybrid materials, and involves their synthesis, characterization and applications. He has worked on the development of advanced methods for the chemical and structural characterization of polycrystalline materials and the application of these techniques to the study of zeolite catalysts, molecular sieves, and optical materials. His current interests are in the field of functional metal-organic frameworks and hybrid perovskites.
His former doctoral students include Paul Attfield, Clare Grey, Matthew Rosseinsky, and Russell E. Morris.

Honours and awards

Cheetham was knighted in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to materials chemistry, UK science and global outreach.