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Leroy Cronin

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This article is about the British chemist. For the Irish film director, see Lee Cronin (director).

Leroy Cronin
FRSE FRSC
Cronin in 2015
Born (1973-06-01) 1 June 1973 (age 51)
NationalityBritish
Alma materUniversity of York
Known forChemistry
AwardsFRSE FRSC Philip Leverhulme Prize Corday–Morgan Prize; RSE BP Hutton Prize; Tilden Prize; Interdisciplinary Prize
Scientific career
FieldsChemistry, Digital Chemistry, Assembly Theory, Nanoscience, Self Assembly, Systems chemistry, Complex Chemical Systems, Inorganic Biology, Supramolecular chemistry, Self-organization, 3D printing
InstitutionsUniversity of Glasgow
University of Birmingham
Research Institute for Electronic Science, University of Hokkaido
University of Bielefeld
University of Edinburgh
Doctoral advisorPaul. H. Walton

Leroy "Lee" Cronin FRSE FRSC (born 1 June 1973)[1] is the Regius Chair of Chemistry in the School of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow.[2][3][4] He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and appointed to the Regius Chair of Chemistry in 2013. He was previously the Gardiner Chair, appointed April 2009.

Biography

Cronin was awarded BSc (1994) and PhD (1997) from the University of York. From 1997 to 1999, he was a Leverhulme fellow at the University of Edinburgh working with Neil Robertson. From 1999-2000 he worked as an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow in the laboratory of Achim Mueller at the University of Bielefeld (1999–2000). In 2000, he joined the University of Birmingham as a Lecturer in Chemistry, and in 2002 he moved to a similar position at the University of Glasgow.

In 2005, he was promoted to Reader at the University of Glasgow, EPSRC Advanced Fellow followed by promotion to Professor of Chemistry in 2006, and in 2009 became the Gardiner Professor. In 2013, he became the Regius Professor of Chemistry (Glasgow).

Cronin gave the opening lecture at TEDGlobal conference in 2011 in Edinburgh.[5] He outlined the initial steps his team at University of Glasgow is taking to create inorganic biology, life composed of non-carbon-based material.

In 2022 Cronin was suspended by the Royal Society of Chemistry for three months for breaching their code of conduct, following a full independent investigation of a complaint made by a third party.[6][7]

Awards and recognition

  • 2007 Philip Leverhulme Prize by the Leverhulme Trust[8]
  • 2012 Royal Society of Chemistry Corday–Morgan medal[9]
  • 2014 recognised as one of the UK's top 10 Inspiring Scientists and Engineers (RISE)[10] as well as being recognised as one of the top 100 UK practising Scientists by the UK Science Council.[11]
  • 2015 Royal Society of Edinburgh BP / Hutton Prize for Energy innovation.[12] Royal Society of Chemistry Tilden Prize.[13]
  • 2018 American Chemical Society Inorganic Chemistry Lectureship[14] Royal Society of Chemistry Interdisciplinary Prize for his work developing the field of digital chemistry

Cronin was the subject of a film entitled Inorganica, which documents the progress of his research in inorganic biology and origins of life.[15]

Digital Chemistry

In 2012 Cronin was described to be designing[16] robots using 3D printed-architectures[17] to discover and design new chemicals and also apply this to important drugs[18] By making a modular system he was able to build a programming language for chemistry named XDL.[19] This was extended to ensure the "chemputer" was universal[20] and this was demonstrated by reading the chemistry synthesis literature and converting it into executable chemical code.[21] The emergence of the ontology for digital chemistry required the design of modular hardware, the development of "chempilation" - the ability to compile chemical code ("XDL code") to any compatible hardware. While this is well established concept in computer science, Cronin and his team were the first to apply this to chemical robotics.[22][23]

Assembly Theory

In 2017 Cronin first published the concept of assembly theory[24] which aims to quantify how complex a molecule is, considering how many steps it would take to build the molecule using the minimum number of steps to add together the various parts allowing reuse, and this is called the assembly index. The important thing about the assembly index is that it is experimentally measurable and it was proposed that the assembly index of complex molecules could be a unique way to use complexity as a biosignature. This hypothesis was then demonstrated using mass spectrometry[25] and the use of the theory to explore chemical spaces was expanded with the development of theory.[26] The mathematical formalism of assembly theory was then expanded by Cronin in 2022[27] and the theory expanded to explore how molecular complexity before biological evolution could be used to build a framework to both quantify and explain selection and evolution.[28] In this paper Cronin and his collaborators presented the assembly equation where the amount of Assembly 'A' is a function of the assembly index of the object and its copy number. Most recently Cronin has demonstrated that the molecular assembly index is an objectively measurable quantity by measuring the assembly index of molecules using mass spectrometry, infrared and NMR spectroscopy.[29] Assembly theory was explored in a quanta article by Philip Ball,[30] by Carl Zimmer in the New York Times,[31] and also in a popular science book by Sara Walker.[32]

References

  1. ^ "The Cronin Group". Archived from the original on 24 September 2011. Retrieved 10 September 2011. Cronin CV
  2. ^ "Prof Leroy Cronin". University of Glasgow. Retrieved 20 February 2011.
  3. ^ "University of Glasgow News Review: Tiny molecule is 10,000 times thinner than a single hair". Gla.ac.uk.
  4. ^ "Chips squeezed by nanoscale work". News.bbc.co.uk. 23 May 2005. Retrieved 31 October 2021.
  5. ^ Cronin, Lee (July 2011). "Making matter come alive". TED. Retrieved 14 March 2022.
  6. ^ Holden, John-Paul (16 July 2022). "Top scientist suspended from Royal Society of Chemistry". The Herald. Retrieved 16 July 2022. A Glasgow University spokesman said: "The university is aware that Professor Lee Cronin has had his membership of the Royal Society of Chemistry suspended for a three-month period, following a full independent investigation into a complaint made by a third party."
  7. ^ Inge, Sophie (15 July 2022). "Top chemist suspended by Royal Society of Chemistry". Research Professional News. Retrieved 25 July 2022. Lee Cronin (pictured), the University of Glasgow's Regius chair of chemistry, was suspended for three months by the society, following a complaint, the RSC announced in Update, its monthly newsletter for members.
  8. ^ "Philip Leverhulme Prize Prizes" (PDF). Leverhulme Trust. Retrieved 28 July 2012.
  9. ^ "Corday–Morgan Prizes". Royal Society of Chemistry. Retrieved 20 June 2012.
  10. ^ "Leroy (Lee) Cronin - EPSRC website". Epsrc.ac.uk. 3 October 2024.
  11. ^ "2014 list of leading UK practising scientists". The Science Council. Retrieved 31 October 2021.
  12. ^ "Home - The Royal Society of Edinburgh". The Royal Society of Edinburgh. 3 June 2021.
  13. ^ "Tilden Prize". Royal Society of Chemistry. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
  14. ^ Howell, Brooke (15 March 2018). "Lee Cronin Wins 2018 Inorganic Chemistry Lectureship". ACS Axial.
  15. ^ "Inorganica". Inorganica.co.uk.
  16. ^ Adams, Tim (21 July 2012). "Chemputer that prints out drugs". The Observer.
  17. ^ Symes, Mark D.; Kitson, Philip J.; Yan, Jun; Richmond, Craig J.; Cooper, Geoffrey J. T.; Bowman, Richard W.; Vilbrandt, Turlif; Cronin, Leroy (May 2012). "Integrated 3D-printed reactionware for chemical synthesis and analysis". Nature Chemistry. 4 (5): 349–354. Bibcode:2012NatCh...4..349S. doi:10.1038/nchem.1313. PMID 22522253.[non-primary source needed]
  18. ^ Kitson, Philip J.; Marie, Guillaume; Francoia, Jean-Patrick; Zalesskiy, Sergey S.; Sigerson, Ralph C.; Mathieson, Jennifer S.; Cronin, Leroy (19 January 2018). "Digitization of multistep organic synthesis in reactionware for on-demand pharmaceuticals". Science. 359 (6373): 314–319. Bibcode:2018Sci...359..314K. doi:10.1126/science.aao3466. PMID 29348235.[non-primary source needed]
  19. ^ Steiner, Sebastian; Wolf, Jakob; Glatzel, Stefan; Andreou, Anna; Granda, Jarosław M.; Keenan, Graham; Hinkley, Trevor; Aragon-Camarasa, Gerardo; Kitson, Philip J.; Angelone, Davide; Cronin, Leroy (11 January 2019). "Organic synthesis in a modular robotic system driven by a chemical programming language". Science. 363 (6423). doi:10.1126/science.aav2211. PMID 30498165.[non-primary source needed]
  20. ^ Mehr, S. Hessam M.; Craven, Matthew; Leonov, Artem I.; Keenan, Graham; Cronin, Leroy (2 October 2020). "A universal system for digitization and automatic execution of the chemical synthesis literature" (PDF). Science. 370 (6512): 101–108. Bibcode:2020Sci...370..101M. doi:10.1126/science.abc2986. PMID 33004517.[non-primary source needed]
  21. ^ Rohrbach, Simon; Šiaučiulis, Mindaugas; Chisholm, Greig; Pirvan, Petrisor-Alin; Saleeb, Michael; Mehr, S. Hessam M.; Trushina, Ekaterina; Leonov, Artem I.; Keenan, Graham; Khan, Aamir; Hammer, Alexander; Cronin, Leroy (8 July 2022). "Digitization and validation of a chemical synthesis literature database in the ChemPU". Science. 377 (6602): 172–180. Bibcode:2022Sci...377..172R. doi:10.1126/science.abo0058. PMID 35857541.[page needed]
  22. ^ Wilbraham, Liam; Mehr, S. Hessam M.; Cronin, Leroy (19 January 2021). "Digitizing Chemistry Using the Chemical Processing Unit: From Synthesis to Discovery" (PDF). Accounts of Chemical Research. 54 (2): 253–262. doi:10.1021/acs.accounts.0c00674. PMID 33370095.[page needed]
  23. ^ Hammer, Alexander J. S.; Leonov, Artem I.; Bell, Nicola L.; Cronin, Leroy (25 October 2021). "Chemputation and the Standardization of Chemical Informatics". JACS Au. 1 (10): 1572–1587. doi:10.1021/jacsau.1c00303. PMC 8549037. PMID 34723260.[page needed]
  24. ^ Marshall, Stuart M.; Murray, Alastair R. G.; Cronin, Leroy (28 December 2017). "A probabilistic framework for identifying biosignatures using Pathway Complexity". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 375 (2109): 20160342. arXiv:1705.03460. Bibcode:2017RSPTA.37560342M. doi:10.1098/rsta.2016.0342. PMC 5686400. PMID 29133442.[non-primary source needed]
  25. ^ Marshall, Stuart M.; Mathis, Cole; Carrick, Emma; Keenan, Graham; Cooper, Geoffrey J. T.; Graham, Heather; Craven, Matthew; Gromski, Piotr S.; Moore, Douglas G.; Walker, Sara. I.; Cronin, Leroy (24 May 2021). "Identifying molecules as biosignatures with assembly theory and mass spectrometry". Nature Communications. 12 (1): 3033. Bibcode:2021NatCo..12.3033M. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-23258-x. PMC 8144626. PMID 34031398.[non-primary source needed]
  26. ^ Liu, Yu; Mathis, Cole; Bajczyk, Michał Dariusz; Marshall, Stuart M.; Wilbraham, Liam; Cronin, Leroy (24 September 2021). "Exploring and mapping chemical space with molecular assembly trees". Science Advances. 7 (39): eabj2465. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abj2465. PMC 8462901. PMID 34559562.[non-primary source needed]
  27. ^ Marshall, Stuart M.; Moore, Douglas G.; Murray, Alastair R. G.; Walker, Sara I.; Cronin, Leroy (27 June 2022). "Formalising the Pathways to Life Using Assembly Spaces". Entropy. 24 (7): 884. Bibcode:2022Entrp..24..884M. doi:10.3390/e24070884. PMC 9323097. PMID 35885107.[non-primary source needed]
  28. ^ Sharma, Abhishek; Czégel, Dániel; Lachmann, Michael; Kempes, Christopher P.; Walker, Sara I.; Cronin, Leroy (12 October 2023). "Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution". Nature. 622 (7982): 321–328. Bibcode:2023Natur.622..321S. doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06600-9. PMC 10567559. PMID 37794189.[non-primary source needed]
  29. ^ Jirasek, Michael; Sharma, Abhishek; Bame, Jessica R.; Mehr, S. Hessam M.; Bell, Nicola; Marshall, Stuart M.; Mathis, Cole; MacLeod, Alasdair; Cooper, Geoffrey J. T.; Swart, Marcel; Mollfulleda, Rosa; Cronin, Leroy (22 May 2024). "Investigating and Quantifying Molecular Complexity Using Assembly Theory and Spectroscopy". ACS Central Science. 10 (5): 1054–1064. doi:10.1021/acscentsci.4c00120. PMC 11117308. PMID 38799656.[non-primary source needed]
  30. ^ Ball, Philip (4 May 2023). "A New Theory for the Assembly of Life in the Universe".
  31. ^ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/science/assembly-theory-life-sara-walker.html#:~:text=Assembly%20theory%2C%20as%20they%20call,to%20make%20exceptionally%20intricate%20things.
  32. ^ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646981/life-as-no-one-knows-it-by-sara-imari-walker/
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