In the years in-between these key dates, he became a husband, father, accomplished coordination chemist, sympathetic teacher, enthusiastic piano player, a stoic cricket batsman, keen cyclist, as well as a key driver behind the introduction of active learning techniques and a student-focussed new curriculum.
He also introduced the school to Robert and Susan, Biggs’s model student characters (John Biggs (1999)) and his comment “but that’s because you are “a Susan”, now think about how we engage with the Roberts” will stay with us for a while yet.
His own anecdotes as told annually to new students suggest that Chris turned himself from an underachieving and disinterested second year undergraduate (Robert) at the University of Cambridge into a keen and engaged finalist (Susan), insinuating himself into the experiments of his future colleague, one Chris Russell, then a PhD student at the same institution. Adams’s experiences during his own studies continued to inform his teaching practices and many past and present students have highlighted his patience and support, especially when they found their initial brush with our teaching lab experience challenging and daunting.
Back to young Adams at Corpus Christi college, who progressed to a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry at Cambridge, working in the group of Paul Raithby. It was Cambridge where he met his future wife, Claire Rice, who he married in 2000, while also studying the transition metal complexes of acetylide ligands. Chris joined the University of Bristol around the same time, first as part of Neil Connelly’s and then Guy Orpen’s groups, where he balanced his teaching commitments and research interests – his direct style was evident from the beginning, with him asking the question “what colour is it?” becoming inextricably and traumatically linked to every Structure of the Week presentation. He solved many crystal structures, often with Tiggerish-glee as the correct complex emerged on the computer screen during the refinement, and was involved in the synthesis and characterisation of coordination complexes across a considerable number of projects and collaborations, as well as attending Bristol City Football matches with his friend and colleague, Jonathan (Charlie) Charmant. Having just moved into the family home and, like most chemists, liking a bit of cooking, he was also an enthusiastic host to many friends and colleagues. He was well known on the University’s cricket circuit, captaining the UoB staff second team through many matches in the Bristol and City local league and bringing a touch of the classic style to the game as a great all-rounder, together with Avinash Patil and colleagues from other departments, and often supported by his young kids.
Chris was appointed to a lectureship in 2006 and secured independent research funding through the First Grant Scheme to pursue transition metal complexes for quantum computing in 2007. This allowed him to recruit a PhD student and a postdoctoral researcher and, for a while, his research flourished. He taught himself how to run the departmental EPR instruments, alongside building collaborations to achieve the characterisation of the complexes made. (The complexes were mostly purple and brown, in case you are wondering.) Chris took a career break in 2010 to focus on his young children, Rachael and Ben, as well as growing rhubarb on his allotment and improving his piano playing.
He couldn’t stay away from the labs of the School of Chemistry for long, though, and joined again as a Teaching Lab Fellow in 2011, initially part-time, shifting his focus to supporting the teaching labs and perfecting his knowledge and practice of chemistry education. Whether for research or teaching, the labs were always his happy place, and he could often be found developing and perfecting a new process or activity. All the better if he could combine this with sharing his obvious pride at the achievements of his wife and children (with anybody who would listen, really, but especially his colleagues sharing the same office at the back of the teaching labs, which included Jenny Slaughter, Karen Parrish, Ben Baker and Rob Thatcher).
It would be remiss of us to not mention his everyday superpower, making every outfit look crumpled by the time he arrived at work (or it might have been the labcoat worn over his clothes most days). Chemistry Balls showed that he scrubbed up well enough in a suit, he accompanied his weekly ironing with the much-loved question of “what is Chris listening to while he’s ironing” on Facebook, and many a skater was instructed to hoik up their trousers before coming to the lab to protect their otherwise bare midriffs, but the fame of Dek Woolfson’s snappy shirts continued to elude him.
Chris’s approach to taking on a new course became tried and tested – for the first year, he’d run with what was there, learning all the details and identifying the problematic areas, while reading extensively around the field and identifying cutting-edge educational and research practices. In the next year, he would begin making changes, using evidence-based approaches to gradually transition each unit and lab course he was involved with towards a more student-centric, skills-focussed and effective approach, considering not just the manual handling skills, but also a forward-looking approach to data handling and analysis. His impact on the delivery of the first year labs, introducing a skills unit and embedding the teaching of skills, as he described in a key paper. This played a role in how his colleagues ended up learning about Robert and Susan, after Chris had aced the CREATE course and became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2019, from where he progressed to Senior Fellow in 2021.
When the COVID-19 pandemic required a rapid pivot towards online teaching, Chris, by then a master at herding cats and deeply familiar with Chemistry’s virtual learning environment, produced instructions and videos to help and support his colleagues in a transition he had already implemented for his own teaching. He was also instrumental in constructing the first year of the new curriculum, steering his colleagues through significant changes in regular meetings, with gentle persistence, hot beverages, and always leading by example. These achievements were recognised in multiple nominations for Bristol Teaching Awards, and he won the award for Innovative Teaching in the Faculty of Science in June 2022, as well as being one of the nominees for the best portfolio award for his SFHEA work in the same round.
With his kids pursuing their own interests as they became older, Chris found time for cycling and walking at the weekend, and he was known to show up at colleagues’ houses unexpectedly, unknowingly triggering them to scurryfunge, when all he wanted was a short pitstop with a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich, before continuing on his way for what was easily a 20 mile walk or a 50 mile cycle ride, posting pictures on social media as he went.
At the start of the 2021/22 academic year, Chris ran catch-up labs for the new second year cohort alongside his usual stint in the first-year labs. He ascribed his growing fatigue to getting too old for the labs but was unfortunately diagnosed with the disease that led to his retirement on medical grounds and subsequent death.
Chris supervised many undergraduate projects across a wide range of topics in coordination chemistry and chemical education. He also supervised and co-supervised several PhD students. He was closely involved with the teaching labs from 2011 to 2022 and we estimate he supported in excess of 2000 students during his time there. He was a great teacher and steadfast colleague, and we miss him.
Chris is survived by his wife and two children, as well as his father and brother. And then there is his unmet challenge of how we are going to incorporate interpretative dance into the assessment of final year projects… which we will revisit in due course.