Frederick George Mann


Frederick George Mann was a British organic chemist.

Biography

He was the second of four children of William Clarence Herbert Mann, senior civil servant at the Admiralty and Elizabeth Ann and was born in West Norwood. He attended local primary schools and then the Battersea Polytechnic Secondary School for Boys, where his work was repeatedly reported as 'excellent in every way'.

Academic career

The school provided direct entry to Battersea Polytechnic, where matriculated students could work for a degree in the University of London. Mann entered in 1913, aged only 16.
After war service Mann was invited by Sir William Pope to work for a PhD at Downing College, Cambridge which he was awarded in 1923. He continued at Downing as an assistant lecturer until 1930, when he was appointed to a lectureship at Trinity College. He spent his entire academic career at Cambridge, retiring in 1964.

Scientific contributions

Mann's research spanned a variety of topics, many at the interface between organic and inorganic chemistry, including investigations of aliphatic polyamines, phosphines, arsines and their complexes; heterocyclic compounds of phosphorus and arsenic and their metal complexes; polycyclic nitrogen compounds; the structure and optical properties of transition metal complexes; stereochemistry, and cyanine dyes.

Honours and awards

He won the Royal Society of Chemistry's Tilden Prize in 1943, and was elected to the Royal Society in 1947.

Personal life

When FG was appointed to a lectureship at Trinity in 1930 it improved his income, enabling him to marry Margaret Reid Shackleton that year. They had two children: Shirley Margaret Shackleton Mann and Carola Mary Shackleton Mann.
Margaret died in Cambridge in 1950. FG married Barbara Thornber the following year; she was an organic chemist, specialising in microanalysis, and later personal secretary to Lord Todd. They had a daughter, Elizabeth Hilary Frances Mann, in 1954.
Frederick George Mann suffered from Alzheimer's disease for the last six years of his life; he died in 1982.