All in the School of Chemistry were profoundly saddened to hear of the death of Helen Bryant early in the New Year. Helen lost her courageous fight against cancer in January and we extend our deepest sympathies to her husband Alan and to her family. 

Helen only joined the staff of the School of Chemistry in August 2007 where she worked as a member of the School technical staff within Synthetic Chemistry. However, in that all-too-short time she earned a reputation for the quality of the support that she provided, and in this way she contributed significantly to a major part of the School’s research activity. Helen took to her new environment here, the breadth and complexity of projects, and the range and diversity of challenges and responsibilities, with tremendous gusto. She brought with her valuable experience from her previous work at Sigma-Aldrich but undertook many tasks outside of her 'comfort zone'. Helen was not fazed by this; where there were gaps in her knowledge, she identified the training needed in order to solve the problem. This 'can-do' approach and her ability to listen earned her widespread respect.

Helen’s attitude, especially over the last few months, provides an inspiration to us all and her impact on those postgraduates and postdocs she helped to achieve their research goals will be her legacy. Helen felt that she had 'the best job in the world' and she is deeply missed.