chemistry

Helen H. Fielding

Helen H. Fielding is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Helen H. Fielding rather than just read about it. In short: Helen H. Fielding is a Professor of physical chemistry at University College London (UCL).

Key takeaways

Helen H. Fielding belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Helen H. Fielding to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Helen H. Fielding from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Helen H. Fielding is a Professor of physical chemistry at University College London (UCL). She focuses on ultrafast transient spectroscopy of protein chromophores and molecules. She was the first woman to win the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize (1996) and Marlow Award (2001).

Education Fielding studied the Natural Sciences Tripos at the University of Cambridge. She began her PhD at the University of Cambridge, working with Timothy Softley, but moved with him to the University of Oxford where they studied excited quantum states using photoelectron spectroscopy. She was awarded her Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1992.

Career and research Fielding was a scientist at the National Physical Laboratory from 1992 to 1993. In 1993 she joined the University of Amsterdam as a postdoctoral fellow, working with Ben van Linden van den Heuvell. Here she worked on Rydberg wave packets in coulombic and magnetic fields. Fielding was appointed a lecturer at King's College London in 1994 after only 18 months of postdoctoral work. She was the first woman to be awarded the Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize in 1996. She is interested in how to excite electron functions coherently, generating a wave packets with a localised probability distribution. Electron movement occurs on the attosecond timescale, making them impossible to image using conventional laser technology. Instead, Fielding employs femtosecond laser pulses to excite electrons to these highly excited Rydberg states. In these excited states, electrons behave both as a particle and a wave, and can be controlled using its wave-like characteristics. She has become one of few worldwide experts in the field. She is primarily interested in materials such as small organic chromophores and photoactivated peptides. She made the first observation of a wave packet in a Rydberg molecule in 2000. This observation made her interested in coherent control, looking to exploit the phase of a rotating Rydberg molecule to manipulate the dynamics of chemical systems. She explored the decay pathways of the Rydberg molecule NO. Fielding used the wavelength and phase of the laser light to select whether NO decays via ionisation or dissociation. One decay route will be the result of constructive interference and the other the result of destructive interference. This study represented a breakthrough in the field; where light of a precise phase could be used to control molecular dynamics. She became interested in how the optical phase corresponds to the electronic and molecular phase, with a particular focus on the attosecond. Fielding was made an EPSRC advanced research fellow in 2001, and was the first woman to be awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Marlow Medal. In 2003 Fielding moved to University College London, where she leads a large laser laboratory. Her recent research has focussed on the dynamics of excited states formed during the absorption of ultraviolet light. She has studied the competition between internal conversion and electron detachment in protein chromophores. She has worked extensively on ultrafast chemical biology in the gas phase. Fielding developed time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy to study the relaxation dynamics of photoexcited molecules. She has investigated the intramolecular dynamics of vibrationally and electronically excited benzene, and demonstrated new electron transfer pathways in pyrrole dimers.

Books 2009 Extreme Photonics & Applications. 2013 Ultrafast Phenomena in Molecular Sciences: Femtosecond Physics and Chemistry 2015 Tutorials in Molecular Reaction Dynamics

Awards and honours 1996 Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize` 2001 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Advanced Research Fellowship 2001 Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Marlow Award 2005 Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Corday-Morgan Prize 2008 Institute of Physics (IOP) Moseley Medal 2017 Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship 2017 Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Award for Service

Personal life Fielding has three children.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Helen H. Fielding

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Helen H. Fielding claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Helen H. Fielding before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Helen H. Fielding ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Helen H. Fielding

In research: Helen H. Fielding appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Helen H. Fielding in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Helen H. Fielding is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Alumni of the University of Cambridge, Alumni of the University of Oxford, British chemists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Helen H. Fielding outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Helen H. Fielding in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Helen H. Fielding means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Helen H. Fielding out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Helen H. Fielding in simple terms?

Helen H. Fielding is a Professor of physical chemistry at University College London (UCL).

Why does Helen H. Fielding matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Helen H. Fielding?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Helen H. Fielding.