User:KennyNHS/sandbox/David Parker
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David Parker
[edit]David Parker MA DPhil CChem FRSC FRS (b. 30 July 1956) is an English chemical scientist and academic.
Parker was born in Leadgate, County Durham, the descendant of musical, mining families and the third child of a bank clerk and primary school teacher. He grew up in Durham City and was educated at Durham Johnston School and briefly at King Edward VI Grammar School, Stafford. Having gained an Open Exhibition to Christ Church, he read Chemistry at Oxford University, where he gained a First Class degree in 1978, and a DPhil in 1980, based on mechanistic studies in asymmetric catalysis. In this period he spent considerable periods of time on the cricket and football pitches around Oxford, and also married [1979] his first wife, Fiona Mary, with whom he has two beautiful daughters, Eleanor and Julia Rose and a son, Philip. In 1980, he gained a NATO Fellowship to work with Jean-Marie Lehn (Nobel Prize, 1987), and unexpectedly was appointed to a Lectureship in Chemistry at Durham University, beginning in January 1982.
His work in Durham is rooted in the design and synthesis of functional molecules, materials and conjugates and has straddled the traditional disciplines of Physical, Organic and Inorganic Chemistry. Often collaborating with European and UK industry, he worked on diverse projects leading to the introduction of imaging and therapeutic agents, including the antibody conjugate MyloTargR (Celltech Ltd.). He gained recognition from the Royal Society of Chemistry, being awarded, the Hickinbottom Fellowship (1988), the Corday-Morgan Medal (1989), a Tilden Lectureship (2003) and the Ludwig Mond Medal (2011). In 2002 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and gained the Lecoq de Boisbaudran prize in rare earth science in 2012. He served as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry on two occasions before his fiftieth birthday.