Martyn Poliakoff

Sir Martyn Poliakoff (born 16 December 1947) is a British chemist, working on fundamental chemistry, and on developing environmentally acceptable processes and materials. The core themes of his work are supercritical fluids, infrared spectroscopy and lasers. He is a research professor in chemistry at the University of Nottingham. As well as carrying out research at the University of Nottingham, he is a lecturer, teaching a number of modules including green chemistry. In the late 2000s and early 2010s he was the main presenter for the YouTube channel Periodic Videos. Early life Poliakoff was born to a British-Jewish mother, Ina (née Montagu), and Russian-Jewish father, Alexander Poliakoff. He has a younger brother, the screenwriter and director Stephen Poliakoff. His paternal grandfather, Joseph Poliakoff, was a prolific inventor of electrical devices who experienced the communist revolution in Russia first-hand, and emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1924. Education Poliakoff was educated at Westminster School followed by King's College, Cambridge, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1969, and a PhD in 1973, for research supervised by J.J. Turner. While an undergraduate at Cambridge, Poliakoff met and became close friends with Tony Judt, who later became a historian and writer.