Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London

The origins of the department lie in the Royal College of Chemistry, which was founded in 1845 on Hanover Square, moving the next year to Oxford Street.[6] Its first professor was August Wilhelm von Hofmann, from the University of Giessen. The college was later incorporated into the Normal School of Science as a department, and the school was refounded as the Royal College of Science in 1890.[7][8] In 1907, the Royal College of Science became one of the founding institutions of Imperial College, which joined the University of London, only to leave it and become independent in 2007.

In 2018 the Molecular Sciences Research Hub opened at the college's new White City campus, becoming the new centre for the department's academic research. Teaching will continue at South Kensington, however, students undertake research projects at the new research hub.[9]

• August Wilhelm von Hofmann, first professor at the Royal College of Chemistry
• Martha Whiteley OBE, one of the inventors of mustard gas (also an alumna of the department)
• Sue Gibson OBE
• Anthony Gerard Martin Barrett FRS, FMedSci (also an alumnus of the department, BSc PhD)
• Lord George Porter OM PRS, 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry[14]

• Frances Micklethwait MBE ARCS, first researcher into a cure for mustard gas
• Sir Derek Barton BSc ARCS PhD, 1969 Nobel Prize in Chemistry[15]
• Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson BSc ARCS PhD, 1973 Nobel Prize in Chemistry[16]