Sir Eric Ride­al who was one of the founders of catal­y­sis in Great Britain and who was the eponym of the famous Eley Ride­al mech­a­nism. Pro­fes­sor E. Ride­al was famous for the work of the Col­loid Sci­ence Lab­o­ra­to­ry which he set up in Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty in the 1930s. He was born in 1890 and was first involved in sur­face chem­istry dur­ing the First World War when, with
H.S. Tay­lor, he worked on cat­a­lysts for the Haber process for the pro­duc­tion of ammo­nia from nitro­gen and hydro­gen, and for the selec­tive oxi­da­tion of car­bon monox­ide in mix­tures of CO and hydro­gen. Lat­er Tay­lor and Ride­al wrote a pio­neer­ing book Catal­y­sis in The­o­ry and Prac­tice. The Ride­al Con­fer­ence is so named in his hon­or; this tri­en­ni­al series of UK research con­fer­ences on sur­face chem­istry and catal­y­sis was ini­ti­at­ed by Charles Kem­ball and oth­ers in the late 1960s.
 
Con­tributed by Jacques Vedrine
June 2002