Frederick Dainton, Baron Dainton

Frederick Sydney Dainton, Baron Dainton, Kt, FRS, FRSE (11 November 1914 – 5 December 1997) was a British academic chemist and university administrator.

A graduate of Oxford and Cambridge, he was successively Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Leeds, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nottingham, Dr Lee's Professor of Chemistry at Oxford and Chancellor of the University of Sheffield.

Early life and education Dainton was born in Sheffield on 11 November 1914, the son of George Whalley Dainton (born 1857), a Clerk of Works to a building contractor, and his second wife Mary Jane Bottrill, as the youngest of nine children. He obtained a scholarship to the Central Secondary School in Sheffield, but it was in the public library that he became enthused of chemistry by reading the books of Sidgwick and Hinshelwood.

Dainton won an Exhibition at St John's College, Oxford with a supplementary grant and loan from the City of Sheffield, which enabled him to study chemistry, He then moved to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge where he received his PhD in 1940 working on photochemistry under Ronald Norrish, FRS.

In 1950 Dainton was appointed Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Leeds, specialising in radiation chemistry; work which resulted in his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society. moving on in 1973 to become Chairman of the University Grants Committee where he remained until 1985. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1991.

Dainton was awarded the Davy Medal in 1969 and the Faraday Medal in 1974. He was awarded the inaugural President's Medal of the Institute of Physics in 1998.

He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Science (DSc) by the University of Bath in 1970.

Dainton was knighted in 1971 and received a life peerage as Baron Dainton, of Hallam Moors in South Yorkshire on 14 February 1986.

Marriage and children Whilst at Cambridge Dainton met (and in 1942 married) a zoology research student, Barbara Hazlitt Wright (died 12 April 2009). They were married for 55 years and had a son and two daughters.

Death Lord Dainton died in Oxford on 5 December 1997 at the age of 83.

Selected publications Science: Salvation or Damnation (1971) Doubts and Certainties: A Personal Memoir of the 20th Century (2000)