Hazel Rossotti

Rossotti (née Marsh) left Millfield School in 1948 and completed her undergraduate and PhD at the University of Oxford.^[2][3][4] Her research considered the stability of metal-ion complexes, and she worked under the supervision of Robert Williams.^[5][6][7] In 1952 she married fellow chemist Francis Rossotti, a fellow graduate student, at St Peter-in-the-East, now part of St Edmund Hall, Oxford.^[8]

In 1962 Rossotti was appointed a Fellow and Tutor in chemistry at St Anne's College, Oxford, and retired in 1997.^[9] She was an advisor to Mary Archer, and an Emeritus Fellow at St Anne's College, Oxford.^[10]

Rossotti held a long-standing passion for photography, and became known as an accomplished photographer.^[11] She specialised in black and white portraits, often of scientists and other colleagues.^[12] In 1974, Rossotti nominated French artist and photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson for an honorary doctorate at the University of Oxford. To mark this award, Cartier-Bresson gifted Rossotti a silver gelatine print of a 1938 photograph of 'Sunday on the Banks of the River Seine'. This print is now held in the Bodleian libraries.^[13] In 1997, Rossotti designed and made the stained glass panels in the library building, Hartland house. ^[14]

Rossotti published numerous science books, on diverse topics from chemistry to colour, fire and Greece. Oliver Sacks remarked that Rossotti was a born teacher and writer, 'incapable of writing a dull word'.^[15]

• 1969 - Chemical Applications of Potentiometry^[16]
• 1970 - H2O^[17]
• 1971 - Metals^[18]
• 1975 - Air^[19]
• 1975 - Introducing Chemistry^[20]
• 1978 - Study of Ionic Equilibria^[21]
• 1985 - Why the World Isn't Grey^[22]
• 1993 - Fire^[23]
• 1998 - Diverse Atoms^[24]
• 2006 - Chemistry in the Schoolroom: 1806^[25][26]