Jack Lewis, Baron Lewis of Newnham

This article is about a British chemist. For the American anti-folk musician, see Jack Lewis (musician).

Jack Lewis, Baron Lewis of Newnham, FRS (born 13 February 1928) is a British chemist working mainly in the area of the transition elements.

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Educated at Barrow Grammar School, he graduated in 1949 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of London, after which he moved to the University of Nottingham where he obtained his Ph.D. In 1953 he was appointed lecturer at the University of Sheffield before returning to London in 1956 as a lecturer at Imperial College London. He was Professor of Chemistry at the University of Manchester from 1961 to 1967, University College London from 1967 to 1970, and the University of Cambridge from 1970 to 1995. He was also the first Warden of Robinson College, the newest of the Cambridge colleges, from its foundation until 2001.^[1]

He was knighted in 1982, won the Royal Society's Davy Medal in 1985,^[2] was created Baron Lewis of Newnham, of Newnham in the County of Cambridgeshire, in 1989 and received the Royal Medal from the Royal Society in 2004.^[3]

He is a member of the House of Lords, where he sits as a cross bencher and is a member of a number of Select Committees on Science and Technology.

In 1951 he married Elfreida Lamb. They have one son and one daughter.^[1]