Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge The Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge is the chemistry department of the University of Cambridge. It was formed from a merger in the early 1980s of two separate departments that had moved into the Lensfield Road building decades earlier: the Department of Physical Chemistry (originally led by Professor Ronald Norrish FRS, Nobel Laureate; the department was previously located near the Old Cavendish in Free School Lane - see photo) and the Department of Chemistry (that included theoretical chemistry and which was led by Lord Alexander R. Todd FRS, Nobel Laureate) respectively.
Cavendish Laboratory new chemistry building with the Department of Chemistry (led by Lord Todd) in Lensfield Road: both chemistry departments merged in the 1980s. In World War II the laboratory carried out research for the MAUD Committee, part of the British Tube Alloys project of research into the atomic bomb. Researchers included Nicholas Kemmer, Alan Nunn May, Anthony French, Samuel Curran and the French scientists including Lew Kowarski and Hans von Halban. Several transferred to Canada in 1943; the Montreal Laboratory and some later to the Chalk River Laboratories. The production of plutonium and neptunium by bombarding uranium-238 with neutrons was predicted