chemistry

Richard Winpenny

Richard Winpenny 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 Richard Winpenny rather than just read about it. In short: Richard Eric Parry Winpenny FRSC FLSW is a British chemist and a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Manchester. Winpenny's research is within the fields of inorganic chemistry and magnetochemistry, specifically the areas of single-molecule magnetism, inorganic synthesis, supramolecular chemistry and polymetallic cage complexes.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Richard Eric Parry Winpenny FRSC FLSW is a British chemist and a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Manchester. Winpenny's research is within the fields of inorganic chemistry and magnetochemistry, specifically the areas of single-molecule magnetism, inorganic synthesis, supramolecular chemistry and polymetallic cage complexes.

Education Winpenny was educated at Sandfields Comprehensive School, Port Talbot. He completed both his Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degree at Imperial College London in 1985 and 1988, respectively. His PhD on New heterometallic polynuclear complexes was supervised by David Goodgame.

Career Upon completing his PhD, Winpenny completed his postdoctoral research with John Fackler, Jr at Texas A&M University from 1988 to 1989 where he researched on mass spectrometry of gold clusters. In 1990, he joined the University of Edinburgh as an academic, and in 2000, moved to The University of Manchester as the chair of inorganic chemistry. Winpenny was the Associate Dean for Research in the University of Manchester Faculty of Science and Engineering from September 2008 to April 2010. He was also the director of the Photon Science Institute from October 2009 to April 2014. Winpenny was the head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Manchester from August 2014 to April 2018, and was the director and chief scientific officer at Sci-Tron(Ltd.) from 2018 to 2024. He was awarded an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Established Career Fellowship (January 2018 to December 2022) and an European Research Council Advanced Fellowship from September 2018 to August 2022.

Research Winpenny developed a wide range of heterometallic rings, examples of molecular magnets, In 2007, Winpenny reported the first intrinsic spin-lattice (T1) and phasecoherence (T2) relaxation times in molecular nanomagnets. The results showed that the value of T2 in deuterated samples were of several orders of magnitude longer than the duration of spin manipulations, which satisfies the prerequisite for the deployment of molecular nanomagnets in quantum information applications. In 2016, Winpenny, Nicholas F. Chilton, and Yan‐Zhen Zheng report a dysprosium complex that showed the largest effective energy barrier to magnetic relaxation of Ueff = 1815 K. The research also showed the largest blocking temperature (TB) for a monometallic complex.

Awards and nominations RSC Prize for Emerging Technologies in the area of materials (2016) Ludwig Mond Award (2016) Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (2016) Tilden Prize (2011) Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award (2009)

References

External links [1] at University of Manchester

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Richard Winpenny

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Richard Winpenny 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 Richard Winpenny 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 Richard Winpenny 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 Richard Winpenny

In research: Richard Winpenny 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 Richard Winpenny 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: Richard Winpenny is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century British chemists, Academics of the University of Manchester, Alumni of Imperial College London, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Richard Winpenny 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 Richard Winpenny in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is Richard Winpenny in simple terms?

Why does Richard Winpenny 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 Richard Winpenny?

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 Richard Winpenny.