Powell, Herbert Marcus, 1906-1991

Born in 1906, and educated at Henry VIII School, Coventry, and St. John's College, Oxford. Taught at Oxford University where he pioneered x-ray crystallography. Dorothy Hodgkin (Nobel Laureate Chemistry 1964) was his first research student. He went on to become first University Demonstrator and then in 1944 Reader in Chemical Chrystallography and Head of the Chemical Crystallography Laboratory, before being given a Personal Chair in 1963. Powell became a Professorial Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford in 1963. He retired from his Chair in 1974. His research field was the determination of crystal structures by x-ray diffraction methods. He also originated and named a new class of molecular compounds (clathrates) in which one atom or molecule is enclosed in a cage formed by other. Powell was an excellent linguist with particular accomplishments in Russian and Chinese. In 1960 he published a paper on how to read Japanese chemical papers without having to learn the language, which aroused great interest amounst Western chemists. He also addressed questions of language representations, seeking to represent linguistic communication by a system of visual symbols. Amongst other interests was writing short stories and other fiction. Powell's scientific achievements were recognised by his election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1953.