Paul Sydney Braterman (born August 1938) is Emeritus Professor of chemistry at the University of North Texas and honorary senior Research Fellow in Chemistry at the University of Glasgow. Braterman is also a science writer and education campaigner. The author of From Stars to Stalagmites and over 120 technical publications, Braterman is a board member of the British Centre for Science Education and scientific adviser to the Scottish Secular Society. Braterman has campaigned successfully against creationism in the classroom in both England and Scotland.
Education and career Braterman was born in London. He received an MA and a DPhil from Balliol College, Oxford, and in 1985 a DSc.
After postdoctoral research at University College London (adviser Robert Williams) and the University of California, Los Angeles (advisers Herbert D. Kaesz and Mostafa El-Sayed), he worked in the chemistry departments of the University of Glasgow, where he rose to the rank of reader (1966–1988), and the University of North Texas as professor and later Regents Professor (1988–2006).
His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, Sandia National Laboratories and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
In 2007, he returned to Glasgow where he is now an Honorary Senior Research Fellow.
Research Braterman is the author of over 120 technical publications and two academic books, Metal Carbonyl Spectra (1975) and the edited Reactions of Coordinated Ligands (1986–1989). He worked as a physical inorganic chemist, but with interests crossing traditional subject boundaries.
An interest in metal carbonyl spectroscopy led on to work on bonding and reactivity in organometallic chemistry. A long-standing interest in charge transfer phenomena, and their possible relevance to photochemical water splitting, led to studies of combined spectroscopy and electrochemistry in Bipyridine derivatives and their transition metal complexes.
Under the influence of Graham Cairns-Smith, he became interested in photochemical and other possible reactions on the early Earth, in connection with the origins of life, and later in isotopic fractionation as evidence of reactions taking place there. In view of the possible importance of minerals in the origins of life, he investigated as model systems, the formation and stability of layered double hydroxides, their interaction with chemically bound organic molecules, and effects on particle morphology.
Activism and writing Since returning to Glasgow in 2007, Paul Braterman has concentrated on educational activities, writing for a broad audience, and campaigning in defence of science education. He is on the board of the British Centre for Science Education, and scientific adviser to the Scottish Secular Society. His work with these organisations contributed to official statements in England and Scotland that creationism should not be taught as science.
His first popular science book, From Stars to Stalagmites (2012), was excerpted in Scientific American.
He has been a regular contributor to 3 Quarks Daily, and his writing has appeared in The Conversation, Scientific American, Newsweek and Massimo Pigliucci’s Scientia Salon.
He has also written for The Panda's Thumb, including on creationist arguments against climate science.
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