Fonds F1461 - Queen's University. Department of Chemistry fonds

Queen's first offered courses in chemistry in 1854, as part of the curriculum in the then-newly founded Faculty of Medicine. It became a separate department in the Faculty of Arts and Science in 1858, when George Lawson was appointed Queen's Professor of Natural History and Chemistry. The Department has also offered a degree program in Engineering Chemistry for students in the Faculty of Applied Science, since the Faculty was established in 1893. It offered a degree program in the slightly different field of chemical engineering from ca. 1900, until a separate department for the discipline was established in Applied Science in 1922. Its tradition of serious research dates from the 1920s, when original research became a major requirement in MA and MSc theses. The modern era of research began in the 1950s, when the first group of PhD students enrolled in the Department. There are now more than 25 full-time faculty. They teach and conduct research in the traditional areas of analytical, inorganic, organic, physical, and theoretical chemistry. There are also strong interdisciplinary programs in bioorganic, bioinorganic, biophysical, and polymer chemistry, as well as in catalysis and chemical physics. The Department has occupied Gordon Hall since 1911, expanding into the attached Gordon Annex in 1949, and the Frost Wing in 1962. The Department moved out of the Gordon-Frost Wing in the Spring of 2002, and into the new chemistry building, known as Chernoff Hall.