Professor Sir David Clary

Background

Professor Sir David Clary FRS was President of Magdalen College from 2005-2020. He is a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University and undertakes research on the quantum theory of chemical reactions. Before coming to Magdalen he was Head of the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Oxford University and a Professorial Fellow of St John’s College. He has held faculty positions at Manchester, Cambridge and UCL. He was a Fellow and Senior Tutor at Magdalene College Cambridge where he is now an Honorary Fellow. His PhD was at Cambridge where he also holds the Sc.D. He was an undergraduate at the University of Sussex where he was awarded the Doctor of Science, honoris causa. He was the first Chief Scientific Adviser to the Foreign Office from 2009-13 and before that was President of the Faraday Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Sir David has been elected to several academies including the Royal Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was knighted in the 2016 Queen’s birthday honours for services to international science.