Posted on: 27 May 2019
Professor Jacqueline Barton, an expert in the chemistry of DNA, visited Trinity recently to deliver the Cocker and RSC Centenary Prize Lecture to over 150 students and researchers. She became the first female to present the Cocker Lecture in the School of Chemistry.
Professor Barton’s visit coincided with the day the latest cohort of Trinity Chemistry graduates received their results. While here, she and her husband, Professor Peter Dervan, talked to current postgraduate students and attended a mini-symposium showcasing DNA-based research in Ireland, before she delivered her lecture on DNA signalling.
This lecture, held biennially, honours the contribution to Trinity’s School of Chemistry by Wesley Cocker, who was the Chair of General Chemistry and University Professor of Chemistry until 1978. In addition the talk formed part of a short lecture series given by Professor Barton and arising from her award of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Centenary Prize in 2018.
Professor Barton’s work is highly celebrated. Her research over the last two decades provides insight into how DNA communicates electronically along its backbone (across a region that represents over 300 base pairs) and acts as a redox switch to trigger damage-repair mechanisms.
Professor Barton is the John Kirkwood and Arthur Noyes Professor of Chemistry and Norman Davidson Leadership Chair of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH). She has won numerous awards including the National Medal of Science in 2010, the American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal in 2015, the Pupin Medal and the Van’t Hoff Award in 2017, and the National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences in 2019.
