The Dwyer Lectures

Francis Patrick John Dwyer (1910–1962) was born at Nelsons Plains, near Raymond Terrace, NSW.

In 1931 he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Sydney and continued on in inorganic chemistry under the supervision of David Mellor gaining his Master of Science in 1933 from the same institution.

The following year he was appointed head teacher of Inorganic Chemistry at Sydney Technical College. In 1946 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science for his research on 'Diazoamino Compounds and Their Metallic Salts and Metallic Hydroxide Lakes' and shortly afterwards was appointed Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney.

In 1958 he accepted the position of reader in Biological Inorganic Chemistry, John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University and in 1960 was given a Personal Chair at the ANU. In 1961 he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. He died suddenly in 1962 at the age of 51.

Dwyer worked on many aspects of coordination chemistry, in particular, platinum metal chemistry and optical resolution of metal complexes. He was a pioneer of bio-inorganic chemistry and was making important contributions in this area at the time of his death.

Late in 1962, his friends, colleagues and former research students within the UNSW Chemical Society established the Dwyer Memorial Lecture and Medal, initially supported by a dedicated fund. The lecture was established in the field of coordination chemistry, to be delivered by a distinguished researcher in the field.

A complete list of the Dwyer Lecturers is given below.

Lecture no.	Year	Lecturer	Institution
I	1963	Professor Ronald S. Nyholm	University College London
II	1964	Professor Melvin Calvin	University of California, Berkeley
III	1965	Professor John C. Bailar Jr.	University of Illinois
IV	1966	Professor Frank A. Cotton	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
V	1967	Professor Hans B. Jonassen	Tulane University
VI	1968	Professor Francis Lions	University of Sydney
VII	1969	Professor David P. Mellor	University of New South Wales
VIII	1972	Professor James F. Duncan	Victoria University of Wellington
IX	1973	Professor Henry Taube	Stanford University
X	1975	Professor James A. Ibers	Northwestern University
XI	1975	Professor Gerold Schwarzenbach	ETH Zürich
XII	1976	Professor Fred Basolo	Northwestern University
XIII	1977	Professor Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson	Imperial College London
XIV	1977	Professor Luigi Sacconi	University of Florence
XV	1978	Professor Daryle H. Busch	Ohio State University
XVI	1980	Professor Ronald J. Gillespie	McMaster University
XVII	1980	Professor Joseph Chatt	University of Sussex
XVIII	1982	Professor Sir Jack Lewis	University of Cambridge
XIX	1985	Professor Alan M. Sargeson	Australian National University
XX	1986	Professor Hubert Schmidbaur	Technical University of Munich
XXI	1988	Professor Richard H. Holm	Harvard University
XXII	1989	Professor Jack D. Dunitz	ETH Zürich
XXIII	1989	Professor Thomas J. Meyer	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
XXIV	1991	Professor Robert D. Peacock	University of Leicester
XXV	1993	Professor George Christou	Indiana University
XXVI	1994	Professor Sir David C. Bradley	University of London
XXVII	1997	Professor Malcolm L. H. Green	University of Oxford
XXVIII	1999	Professor Peter J. Sadler	University of Edinburgh
XXIX	2000	Professor Warren R. Roper	University of Auckland
XXX	2002	Professor Ian G. Dance	University of New South Wales
XXXI	2003	Professor Harry B. Gray	California Institute of Technology
XXXII	2007	Professor Charles P. Casey	University of Wisconsin–Madison
XXXIII	2009	Professor Michael D. Fryzuk	University of British Columbia
XXXIV	2010	Professor Richard Eisenberg	University of Rochester
XXXV	2017	Professor Andrew L. Goodwin	University of Oxford

Professor Francis Patrick Dwyer

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