Professor Peter Battle elected Pro-Master

Professor Peter Battle, Fellow and Tutor in Inorganic Chemistry at St Catherine’s, has been elected Pro-Master of the College.

He says of his appointment: “Roger Ainsworth was an outstanding leader of St Catherine’s College and had a remarkable impact on the entire College community throughout his tenure. I am honoured to continue his legacy whilst we elect a new Master to lead the College forward.”

Peter was an undergraduate at the University of Bristol and a graduate student at Oxford, where he studied at Wolfson College, receiving his D.Phil. in 1980. Following this, he spent four years as a Research Fellow at St Catherine’s, before taking up a Lectureship at the University of Leeds in 1984, and finally returning to Catz in 1989 as a Tutorial Fellow. In 2002, the University of Oxford awarded him the title of Professor of Chemistry.

Peter teaches inorganic chemistry at the College, and his research lies in the field of solid-state chemistry, focusing on the electronic properties of solids. Over the course of his career, he has served on the Editorial Advisory Board of the journals Chemistry of Materials, Journal of Solid State Chemistry, and Progress in Solid State Chemistry, as well as being Editor of Chemistry of Materials for several years. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Sydney, Caen, and Bordeaux.  In 2006, his work was recognized by the Royal Society of Chemistry Award for Solid State Chemistry.

During his time at St Catherine’s, Peter has served the College as Tutor for Admissions (1994-1997), Vice-Master (2007-2009), and Senior Tutor (2010-2011). He assumes the role of Pro-Master following the sad death of the late Master, Professor Roger Ainsworth.