Peter Wardman

Honorary Member 2005

Peter Wardman has been a Member of the Association for Radiation Research since 1973, serving as Honorary Secretary (1978-82), Vice-Chairman (1990-92), Chairman (1992-94), and Honorary Treasurer of the 8th International Congress of Radiation Research, hosted by the Association, in 1987. He has also served as Councilor for Chemistry in the International Association of Radiation Research and the [US] Radiation Research Society. The Association honoured him with the award of the Weiss Medal in 1987, and Honorary Membership in 2005. Other honours include the award of the Silvanus Thompson Medal of the British Institute of Radiology (2008), and the Maria Sklodowska-Curie Medal of the Polish Radiation Research Society (2013). He trained as a radiation chemist at the University of Leeds under the direction of Lord Dainton FRS (receiving the H M Dawson Prize for Physical Chemistry in 1964), and was awarded the degrees of PhD in 1967 and DSc in 1990. Postdoctoral appointments included work at Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories, Ontario, and with John Baxendale in Manchester, followed by a short period working on environmental chemistry problems with the British Aircraft Corporation. Ged Adams recruited him to the Gray Laboratory in 1973, introducing him to broader applications of radiation chemistry, notably the rational development of hypoxic cell radiosensitizers, and hypoxia-selective drugs and diagnostic probes. Research work, published in about 250 articles, has included many studies of the redox properties of free radicals, marked by a review in the Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data in 1989 which has received about 1000 citations; more recent interests include the chemistry of free-radical associated oxidative and nitrosative stress. He has been associated as visiting professor with Brunel University, King's College London, University College London, and the University of Oxford. Before his retirement, he was head of the Cancer Research UK Free Radicals Research Group, and Deputy Director of the former Gray Cancer Institute at Mount Vernon Hospital, which is now part of the Department of Radiation Oncology and Biology of the University of Oxford, having relocated to Oxford in 2008.

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