Although born in Edinburgh, Ed Constable succumbed to the gravitational pull of the South of England at an early age and spent his formative years in Hastings. After studying Chemistry at St Catherine's College, he remained in Oxford for his DPhil under the guidance of Ken Seddon. He moved to Cambridge in 1980 and after a period supported by the (then) SRC and a Fellowship from the Commissioners of the Royal Exhibition of 1851 he held demonstrator and lectureship positions in the Chemistry Department. In 1993 he accepted a call to the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Basel and after a brief stay at the University of Birmingham 2000-2001, he returned to Basel to hold a chair of Chemistry. He has been Research Dean of the Natural Sciences Faculty and is currently Vice Rector of the University. His research interests cover all aspects of the application of supramolecular and coordination chemistry to problems at the interface of chemistry, physics and biology and his present emphasis, supported by the ERC Advanced Grant LiLo, Light-In, Light-Out, is the development of a sustainable materials chemistry for energy-related applications based upon Earth-abundant metals.
