chemistry

Tristram Chivers

Tristram Chivers 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 Tristram Chivers rather than just read about it. In short: Tristram Chivers (born 22 August 1940) is a British-Canadian chemist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary. His main research interest is the inorganic chemistry of the main group elements, particularly boron, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, selenium, and tellurium.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Tristram Chivers (born 22 August 1940) is a British-Canadian chemist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary. His main research interest is the inorganic chemistry of the main group elements, particularly boron, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, selenium, and tellurium. Chivers was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1991 and is also a Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada. He has been described as the "godfather" of main group chemistry in Canada.

Early life and education Chivers was born in Bath, Somerset and attended Colston's School in Bristol. He graduated from Durham University in 1961 with a first-class degree in chemistry. He stayed on at Durham for doctoral studies, and completed his PhD in 1964 under the supervision of R. D. Chambers. He was awarded the DSc degree by Durham University in 1981.

Career and research After brief periods as a postdoc at the University of Cincinnati and a tutorial fellow at the University of Sussex, Chivers moved permanently to Canada in 1967, joining the University of British Columbia as a teaching postdoctoral fellow. In 1969, he joined the University of Calgary as an assistant professor, becoming a full professor in 1978. He served as head of the Department of Chemistry from 1977 to 1982. At Calgary, Chivers and his colleagues made "notable contributions" to the chemistry of chalcogen compounds. His early work included identifying the blue species formed by sulfur in reducing media as the trisulfur radical anion, which was subsequently shown by Robin Clark to be the blue chromophore in the mineral lapis lazuli. Several ring and cage compounds discovered by Chivers and his collaborators became "textbook examples"; the 1998 edition of Chemistry of the Elements by Norman Greenwood and Alan Earnshaw devoted twelve pages to sulfur–nitrogen chemistry originating from his laboratory. Chivers was senior editor of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry from 1993 to 1998 and served as president of the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) from 2000 to 2001. He received the E. W. R. Steacie Award from the Canadian Society for Chemistry in 2001 and an honorary degree from the University of Oulu in Finland in 2006. In 2025, he received the Wolfgang Günther Award for Lifetime Achievement in Selenium and Tellurium Chemistry.

Selected publications

Books Chivers, Tristram (2005). A Guide to Chalcogen–Nitrogen Chemistry. World Scientific. ISBN 9789812560957. ———; Manners, Ian (2009). Inorganic Rings and Polymers of the p-Block Elements: From Fundamentals to Applications. Royal Society of Chemistry. ISBN 9781847559067. ———; Laitinen, Risto S. (2021). Chalcogen–Nitrogen Chemistry: From Fundamentals to Applications in Biological, Physical and Materials Sciences. World Scientific. ISBN 9789811241352.

Journal articles Chivers, Tristram; Drummond, I. (1972). "Characterization of the trisulfur radical anion S3− in blue solutions of alkali polysulfides in hexamethylphosphoramide" (PDF). Inorganic Chemistry. 11 (10): 2521–2523. doi:10.1021/ic50116a047. ——— (1985). "Synthetic methods and structure-reactivity relationships in electron-rich sulfur-nitrogen rings and cages" (PDF). Chemical Reviews. 85 (5): 341–365. doi:10.1021/cr00069a001. ———; Gao, X.; Parvez, M. (1996). "Preparation, Crystal Structures, and Isomerization of the Tellurium Diimide Dimers RNTe(μ-NR′)2TeNR (R = R′ = tBu; R = PPh2NSiMe3, R′ = tBu, tOct): X-ray Structure of the Telluradiazole Dimer [tBu2C6H2N2Te]2" (PDF). Inorganic Chemistry. 35 (1): 9–15. Briand, G.; Chivers, T.; Parvez, M. (2002). "A new approach to metalated imido and amido tellurophosphoranes" (PDF). Angewandte Chemie International Edition. 41 (18): 3468–3470. Garje, S. S.; Eisler, D. J.; Ritch, J. S.; Afzaal, M.; O’Brien, P.; Chivers, T. (2006). "A new route to antimony telluride nanoplates from a single-source precursor" (PDF). Journal of the American Chemical Society. 128 (10): 3120–3121. doi:10.1021/ja0582408. ———; Laitinen, Risto S. (2015). "Tellurium: a maverick among the chalcogens". Chemical Society Reviews. 44 (7): 1725–1739. doi:10.1039/C4CS00434E.

References

External links Tristram Chivers publications indexed by Google Scholar

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Tristram Chivers

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Tristram Chivers 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 Tristram Chivers 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 Tristram Chivers 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 Tristram Chivers

In research: Tristram Chivers 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 Tristram Chivers 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: Tristram Chivers is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1940 births, Academic staff of the University of Calgary, Alumni of Hatfield College, Durham, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Tristram Chivers 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 Tristram Chivers in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is Tristram Chivers in simple terms?

Why does Tristram Chivers 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 Tristram Chivers?

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 Tristram Chivers.