Inaugural Lecture - Probing the Molecular World; Adventures with Electrons and Light

We live in a molecular world; a nano-scale world in which molecules are constantly interacting with one another and external stimuli to produce physical and chemical processes that influence the macroscopic world around us. The formation of molecules in the interstellar medium; the processes that lead to the destruction of ozone in the terrestrial atmosphere; the engineering that underpins the construction of semiconductor chips and the mechanisms that lead to radiation damage of DNA - all are controlled by molecular processes. Understanding such molecular interactions and devising new techniques that allow them to be manipulated and controlled remains one of the greatest challenges for modern research and underpins the development of many of the new technologies for the 21st century. This talk will describe how Professor Mason's research on electron and photon interactions with molecules has revealed that it is possible to control the excitation and dissociation of molecules through the adaptation of selective cleavage of chemical bonds. Such 'single molecule engineering' provides exciting new opportunities that can now be exploited by both the research and technological communities and may even help explain the origins of life itself!