Profess Mary McPartlin, who passed away in July, enjoyed solving difficult problems
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Professor Mary McPartlin at the age of 89.
Mary was Professor of Structural Chemistry at London Metropolitan University (formally North London University), but had long-standing scientific links with this department, having worked closely with Professor Lord Jack Lewis on cluster chemistry in the golden years of metal-metal cluster bonding and theory.
After her retirement, Mary joined this department as a visiting professor, and continued to work here for close to ten years. She took the greatest pleasure in solving the most challenging crystallographic problems she could find in the building and elsewhere (in addition to solving the Times cryptic crossword puzzle almost every day).
Mary made many land-mark discoveries during a career spanning more than forty years. She understood crystallography deeply and reveled in bypassing SHELX with her own insights, solving problems on paper where space group and twinning assignments were ambiguous. She is probably best known for her work on metal clusters, particularly her breakthrough discoveries in gold cluster chemistry, at a time when molecular single-crystal X-ray crystallography was very much at the cutting-edge and a developing science.
She was the recipient of the 1987 Royal Society of Chemistry Structural Chemistry Award and published close to 500 papers.
Mary was an inspiration to so many students both here and throughout her career – an exceptionally cultured, class-act in every sense and very much ‘your highly intellectual great aunt’ to so many young researchers who had the fortune of working with her.
So, here’s to Mary, we are grateful to you for all that you have done and for knowing you.
by Professor of Inorganic Chemistry Dominic Wright
