I studied chemistry at the University of Glasgow (B.Sc. with First Class Honours, 1963; Ph.D. 1967). As a graduate student I worked on the crystal structures of arene chromium tricarbonyls under the supervision of Professor J.M. Robertson. My doctoral dissertation also described some original crystallographic computer programs, including ASS, a primitive automatic structure solution package which I developed with Douglas MacGregor. I then worked for two years with Professor Jim Ibers of Northwestern University on the structures of silyl, SO2 and alkene complexes of the platinum group metals.
I was appointed a lecturer in the School of Molecular Sciences of the University of Sussex in 1969. There I continued my interest in silyl complexes and started work on the structural trans influence in platinum(II) complexes. This interest continued when I moved to Glasgow in 1972. I was subsequently made senior lecturer (1981) and reader (1985). I served on the editorial board of Acta Crystallographica from1988 to 1997.
My work in the intervening years is described in about 290 publications. Much of it has been concentrated in two areas.
(1) Reactions of coordinated ligands, particularly alkynes (in conjunction with Dr Jack Davidson, Heriot Watt University) and Professor F.Y. Petillon, University of Brest)
(2) Polynuclear platinum complexes stabilised by diphosphine ligands (in conjunction with Dr Ljubica Manojlovic-Muir & Professor R.J. Puddephatt F.R.S.).
In 2000 I became the founding Director of the Glasgow-Strathclyde Crystallography Laboratory. This laboratory is based in Glasgow University and its Nonius KappaCCD diffractometer and Cryostream700 provide XRD facilities for the two chemistry departments.
My wife Dr Ljubica Manojlovic-Muir is also a crystallographer and we collaborated closely in research until she retired from her Readership in Chemistry in 1996. We have a son and a daughter (and have just acquired our second grand daughter). I shall retire at the end of 2004.