Harry R. Allcock
Harry R. Allcock was born in Loughborough, England. He received his B.Sc. and Ph.D degrees from the University of London, and was a postdoctoral scientist at Purdue University in the U.S.A and at the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa. Following five years as a research scientist at the American Cyanamid Laboratories in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1966 he moved to the Pennsylvania State University. Since 1985 he has been an Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry, Penn State's highest academic honor.
Harry Allcock's research is at the interface between inorganic and organic chemistry, polymer chemistry, and materials science. It is based on the principle that new materials with hitherto unseen combinations of properties are accessible by the incorporation of inorganic elements into the backbone structure of polymers. He was the discoverer of a major class of polymers known as polyphosphazenes which are based on a backbone of alternating phosphorus and nitrogen atoms with two organic, inorganic, or organometallic side groups linked to each phosphorus. His research group has been one of the main sources of new discoveries in this field for more than 30 years. He also discovered a new class of molecular inclusion compounds (clathrates) that have been used to separate a wide variety of organic small molecules and high polymers, and which also serve as nano-scale templates for addition polymerizations. A characteristic of his research program is its emphasis on long-range fundamental science, and on the utilization of this science to initiate new advances in medicine, aerospace materials, energy storage, fuel cells, and photonic materials
Allcock and his coworkers have published more than 500 papers and reviews on the synthesis, characterization, and uses of phosphazenes, and he is the author of three monographs on inorganic-organic rings and polymers including "Chemistry and Applications of Polyphosphazenes", Wiley, 2003, 725 pages, which summarizes the accomplishments in his program together with the research by other groups working in this field.
Professor Allcock has received numerous awards for his research including the American Chemical Society (ACS) National Award in Polymer Chemistry, the ACS Award in Materials Chemistry, and the ACS Herman Mark Award in Macromolecular Science. He has also received the American Institute of Chemists Chemical Pioneer Award and has been selected to receive the 2007 ACS National Award in Applied Polymer Science. In 2006, Allcock was awarded an honorary D.Sc. degree from Loughborough University in the U.K. He has been a visiting scientist at Stanford University, Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, and the IBM Almaden Laboratories in San Jose, California. Allcock was a Guggenheim Fellow during 1986-87.