| AdminHistory | Sir Richard Stafford Cripps is best known as a lawyer and Labour politician who held the post of Chancelor of the Exchequer (1947-1950). As an undergraduate he studied chemistry at University College London under Sir William Ramsay. During his time as a student, aged just 22, he wrote a paper 'The Critical Constants of Orthobaric Densities of Xenon' with hubert Sutton Patterson and Robert Whytlaw Gray, which was read at the Royal Society and publiched in 'Proceedings A' vol 86, 1912. He left UCL a year before graduating, to pursue a legal career. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1948 under statute 12 'as a person who had rendered conspicuous service to science'. Holding several prominent offices within Government, especially as Minister of Aircraft Production (1942-1945) and President of the Board of Trade (1945-1947) , Stafford Cripps worked closely with Fellows of the Royal Society who held positions as advisors, including: Sir Thomas Merton, Sir Ian Heilbron, Sir William Stanier and Professor Patrick Blackett. |