chemistry

Matthew Fuchter

Matthew Fuchter 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 Matthew Fuchter rather than just read about it. In short: Matthew John Fuchter is a British chemist who is a professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the development and application of novel functional molecular systems to a broad range of areas; from materials to medicine.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Matthew John Fuchter is a British chemist who is a professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the development and application of novel functional molecular systems to a broad range of areas; from materials to medicine. He has been awarded both the Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize (2014) and the Corday–Morgan Prizes (2021) of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2020 he was a finalist for the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists.

Early life and education Fuchter earned a master's degree (MSci) in chemistry at the University of Bristol, where he was awarded the Richard Dixon prize. It was during his undergraduate degree that he first became interested in organic synthesis. As a graduate student he moved to Imperial College London, where he worked with Anthony Barrett on the synthesis and applications of porphyrazines, including as therapeutic agents. During his doctoral studies Barrett and Fuchter collaborated with Brian M. Hoffman at Northwestern University.

Research and career After completing his PhD, Fuchter moved to Australia, for postdoctoral research at CSIRO and the University of Melbourne, where he worked with Andrew Bruce Holmes. In 2007 Fuchter returned to the United Kingdom, where he began his independent academic career at the School of Pharmacy, University of London (now UCL School of Pharmacy). Less than one year later he was appointed a Lecturer at Imperial College London, where he was promoted to Reader (Associate Professor) in 2015 and professor in 2019. Fuchter develops photoswitchable molecules, chiral materials and new pharmaceuticals. Fuchter is interested in how considerations of chirality can be applied to the development of novel approaches in chiral optoelectronic materials and devices. In particular, he focusses on the introduction of chiral-optical (so-called chiroptical) properties into optoelectronic materials. Amongst these materials, Fuchter has extensively evaluated the use of chiral small molecule additives (helicenes) to induce chiroptical properties into light emitting polymers for the realisation of chiral (circularly polarised, CP) OLEDs. He has also investigated the application of such materials in circularly polarised photodetectors, which are devices that are capable of detecting circularly polarised light. As well as using chiral functional materials for light emission and detection, Fuchter has investigated the charge transport properties of enantiopure and racemic chiral functional materials. Fuchter has also developed novel molecular photoswitches – molecules that can be cleanly and reversibly interconverted between two states using light – with a focus on heteroaromatic versions of azobenzene. The arylazopyrazole switches developed by Fuchter out perform the ubiquitous azobenzene switches, demonstrating complete photoswitching in both directions and thermal half-lives of the Z isomer of up to 46 years. Fuchter continues to apply these switches to a range of photoaddressable applications from photopharmacology to energy storage. Alongside his work on functional material discovery, Fuchter works in medicinal chemistry and develops small molecule ligands that can either inhibit or stimulate the activity of disease relevant proteins. While he has worked on many drug targets, he has specialised in proteins involved in the transcriptional and epigenetic processes of disease. A particular interest has been the development of inhibitors for the histone-lysine methyltransferase enzymes in the Plasmodium parasite that causes human malaria. In 2018 one of the cancer drugs developed by Fuchter, together with Anthony Barrett, Simak Ali and Charles Coombes entered a phase 1 clinical trial, and as of 2020, it is in phase 2. The drug, which was designed using computational chemistry, inhibits the cyclin-dependent kinase 7 (CDK7), a transcriptional regulatory protein that also regulates the cell cycle. Certain cancers rely on CDK7, so inhibition of this enzyme has potential to have a significant impact on cancer pathogenesis. In 2024 Fuchter joined the University of Oxford as a Professor of Chemistry and the Sydney Bailey Fellow in Chemistry at St Peter’s College Oxford.

Academic service Fuchter serves on the editorial board of MedChemComm. He is an elected council member of the Royal Society of Chemistry organic division. Fuchter is co-director of the Imperial College London Centre for Drug Discovery Science.

Awards and honours 2014 Royal Society of ChemistryHarrison-Meldola Memorial Prize 2014 Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) 2015 Thieme Medical Publishers Chemistry Journal Awardee 2017 Imperial College London President's Award for Excellence in Research 2017 Imperial College London President’s Medal for Excellence in Innovation and Entrepreneurship 2018 Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award 2018 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Established career fellowship 2020 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists 2021 Royal Society of Chemistry Corday–Morgan Prize 2022 Royal Society of Chemistry Stephanie L. Kwolek Award 2023 Royal Society of Chemistry Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Sector Malcolm Campbell Memorial Prize 2023 Elected Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Matthew Fuchter

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Matthew Fuchter 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 Matthew Fuchter 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 Matthew Fuchter 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 Matthew Fuchter

In research: Matthew Fuchter 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 Matthew Fuchter 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: Matthew Fuchter is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Alumni of Imperial College London, Alumni of the University of Bristol, British chemists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Matthew Fuchter 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 Matthew Fuchter in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Matthew Fuchter 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 Matthew Fuchter out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Matthew Fuchter in simple terms?

Why does Matthew Fuchter 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 Matthew Fuchter?

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 Matthew Fuchter.