Royal Society of Chemistry Tilden Prize for Charlotte Williams

14 June 2021

Trinity Chemistry Fellow Charlotte Williams has won the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Tilden Prize for her work on the advancement of sustainable polymers.

Established in 1939, the Tilden Prize is awarded for advances in the field of Chemistry, and recognises excellence in the field of chemistry. 

Professor Williams said: ‘I am delighted and honoured to be awarded the RSC Tilden Medal. All my research is conducted within teams both in the university and industry sectors. I sincerely thank and acknowledge the hard-work, inspiration and collaboration with all my postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers, academic and industrial collaborators, past and present.’

Professor Williams’s research includes development of homogenous polymerization catalysts and the study of polyesters/carbonates and ethers. Her team in Oxford’s chemistry department have discovered new ways to use and recycle renewable resources, such as plants or carbon dioxide, to make precise polymer structures showing properties suitable for use as plastics, elastomers, coatings, adhesives and within fibre reinforced composites. In addition to the Tilden Prize, she was recently elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and was made an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.