Peter Atkins
Peter William Atkins (born 1940) is a Fellow and professor of chemistry at Lincoln College in the University of Oxford, England. He is a prolific writer of popular chemistry textbooks, particularly Physical Chemistry (ISBN 0-19-879285-9), Inorganic Chemistry (ISBN 0-19-850330-X),and Molecular Quantum Mechanics, three of the world's most popular chemistry textbooks. Atkins' Physical Chemistry which he co wrote with Julio de Paula of Haverford College, is now in its 8th edition; Atkins' Molecular Quantum Mechanics is in its 4th. Atkins is also the author of a number of popular science works, including Atkins' Molecules and Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science.
Atkins, who is an atheist, has also written and spoken on issues of humanism, atheism, and what he sees as the incompatibility between science and religion. In a 2006 documentary The Trouble With Atheism, by Rod Liddle he described Scientists who believed in God as being only "half-Scientists really." He is the Senior Member for the Oxford Secular Society and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.
Atkins studied chemistry at the University of Leicester, obtaining a bachelor's degree in chemistry and in 1964 a Ph.D. for research into electron spin resonance and other aspects of theoretical chemistry. In 1969, he won the Royal Society of Chemistry's Meldola Medal. Atkins then taught physical chemistry at UCLA and later at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he has been ever since.
Atkins married Judith Ann Kearton in 1964 and together they had one daughter, Juliet Louise Tiffany (born 1970). The couple divorced in 1983. He later married a fellow scientist Susan Greenfield (later Baroness Greenfield) in 1991. The couple divorced in 2005.
Atkins has lectured in quantum mechanics and quantum chemistry courses (up to graduate level) at the University of Oxford.