Draft:Harry Lister Riley

• Comment: He might qualify for academic notability, WP:NACADEMIC. However, there are insufficient sources here to verify, and I (or another reviewer) cannot dig through archives to find them. Please be much more specific with sources and his notability. Ldm1954 (talk) 06:50, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

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Harry Riley at work, circa 1935

Harry Lister Riley (September 7, 1899 - 1986) B.Sc., ARCS, DIC DS was a British chemist based in London and Newcastle, where he undertook research into coke and coal. It was his work on selenium dioxide, as a post-doctoral student at Imperial College, published in 1932, which earned him the most attention, and the naming of a process after him known as "Riley oxidation". He was Professor Inorganic and Physical Chemistry at the University of Durham, and in 1947 was appointed director of carbonisation research at Britain’s National Coal Board where he served until his retirement in the 1960s.

Early life and education

Riley was born in Keighley, Yorkshire, the oldest of three brothers. At the age of 10, he attended Holycroft Council School, Keighley, where he won a Borough Scholarship which enabled him to go on to study at Keighley Boy’s Grammar School., where he was head prefect from 1916-1917. He graduated from school with honours and was awarded a County Major Scholarship, after coming joint top for Yorkshire, along with a student from Keighley Girls’ Grammar School.

Before taking up his scholarship, he joined the Royal Army and Served as a corporal with the 9^th King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (K.O.Y.L.I., 1917-1919) in France during the Great War, seeing action in the trenches of the Somme in 1918.

After the war he entered the Royal College of Science in 1919, (part of Imperial College). In 1921 he received his B.Sc. degree with honours in Chemistry, and became an ARCS (Associate of the Royal College of Science). That year he was also the winner of the Frank Hatton prize for the most efficient student in advanced Chemistry (1920-21).

In 1921 Imperial College awarded him a Sir Otto Beit Scientific Research Fellowship for a thesis entitled “Studies in Complex Salts and other papers”. The fellowship, worth £250 a year, ran from 1921-23, and lead to the degree of Doctor of Science being conferred upon him.

Research and notability

Riley remained at Imperial College as a demonstrator and later lecturer from 1923-32, where he continued to pursue research in inorganic chemistry. It was during his time that he began to study the role of selenium oxides as oxidants of organic compounds, pioneering a new chemical process involving Selenium, known today as Riley Oxidation. Whilst these studies occupied Riley for a relatively short period, his 1932 publication had perhaps the deepest impact among his more than four decades of his publications. Although selenium oxides' role as an oxidant of organic compounds had first been surmised in the late 19th century, it was systematic studies of this process by Riley and his coworkers with purified SeO2 that captured the imagination of synthetic chemists leading to more than 500 distinct substrates created using Riley Oxidation over the next decade highlighting the unmet needs for Riley's work.